SuspiciouS Outbound Connection to Amazon EC2 servers

[netad_min12345]

I have upgraded my NAS to 6.5.0-RC3.

Recently, I am noticing some suspecious connections to Amazon EC2 servers. I got this info from a tcpdump packetcap.

I am not using any kind of cloud services under the under the cloud tab nor are they enabled, and I dont have any apps installed on my NAS.

After some tinkering in the back end, I noticed that "readynasd" is the service that is initiating these connections:
root@NAS01:/proc# lsof -i
wget 14575 root 4u IPv4 342524 0t0 TCP NAS01:52391->ec2-52-9-25-12.us-west-1.compute.amazonaws.com:http (SYN_SENT)

root@NAS01:/proc# pstree
systemd─┬─2*[agetty]
├─apache2─┬─7*[apache2]
│ ├─4*[apache2───dbbroker.cgi]
│ └─2*[apache_log]
├─avahi-daemon───avahi-daemon
├─connmand
├─cron
├─dbus-daemon
├─fvbackup-q───2*[{fvbackup-q}]
├─mdadm
├─mdcsrepaird───{mdcsrepaird}
├─minissdpd
├─nmbd
├─raidard
├─readynasd─┬─sh───wget
│ └─14*[{readynasd}]
├─rsync
├─smbd─┬─cleanupd
│ ├─smbd
│ └─smbd-notifyd
├─sshd───sshd───bash───pstree
├─systemd-journal
├─systemd-logind
├─udevd───2*[udevd]
└─wsdd2

A ps faux also reveals that readynasd manifests DNS query and wget to Amazon servers.

My questions is what is the need of these connections, and why is that when I disable any cloud related services, they are still making outbound connections to Amazon services?

[Skywalker · Accepted solution]

The particular connection you mentioned is what determines whether you get a green "Internet Available" checkmark, or an "Offline" notation in the Cloud tab of the GUI.

[kohdee]

Even with services disabled, ReadyNAS still needs to connect to the ReadyCLOUD discovery server as well as the firmware update server, and or gathering the list of apps. 

[Skywalker · Accepted solution]

The particular connection you mentioned is what determines whether you get a green "Internet Available" checkmark, or an "Offline" notation in the Cloud tab of the GUI.