[tor-relays] Operating system diversity?

[grarpamp]

On Tue, Jun 17, 2014 at 10:38 AM, Jonathan D. Proulx <jon at csail.mit.edu> wrote:
> I'm not sure if this was meant as a technical or aesthetic preference,
> but I am curious.  Is there any technical benefit to rounning a more
> diverse set of opensource oprating systems for tor nodes? I discount
> closed source as we don't know what's going on in there.
>
> Would that present significantly different attack surfaces? I can
> imagine a vulnerability in the TCP stack or other kernel functionality
> in Linux would not be the saem in FreeBSD or vice versa...
>
> My nodes are currently Ubuntu but if there's a reason to do so I
> coould possibly switch OS to FreeBSD (or hurd does tor run on hurd :))

These surface differences result in real world immunities. If all you're running
is one thing, and that one thing gets cracked, it's over. This happens all the
time. And it's not just the kernel, it's also the differences in libraries, etc.
So yes, for that purpose regarding the Tor network, don't pick Linux
or Windows. If you want to play and learn something new and not closed
source, pick one of the BSD's... free, open, dfly, net. FreeBSD is the
obvious general choice, the others will subject you to more specific challenges.

4796 Linux
1650 Windows
 294 FreeBSD
  75 Darwin
  35 OpenBSD
   9 NetBSD
   4 Bitrig
   2 SunOS
   2 GNU/kFreeBSD
   2 DragonFly