Firefox connects to Amazon and Edgecast servers. Why?

[steevz016]

With all extentions disabled, on startup with no start page, Firefox will attempt to connect to Amazon and Edgecast servers.

[DanRaisch]

What is selected for "Home page" when Firefox start up under Tools->Options->General?

Have you scanned the system for malware?
Install and run these programs, consecutively, not simultaneously.
http://www.superantispyware.com/
http://www.safer-networking.org/en/index.html
http://www.bleepingcomputer.com/download/adwcleaner/
https://www.malwarebytes.org/

If these don't find it or can't clear it, post in one of these forums for specialized malware removal help:
http://www.spywarewarrior.com/index.php
http://bleepingcomputer.com/
http://www.spywareinfoforum.com/
http://aumha.net/viewforum.php?f=30
https://forums.malwarebytes.org/index.p ... topic=9573

[JayhawksRock]

Amazon and Edgecast both provide CDN (Content Delivery Network) services to Mozilla and other content providers.... meaning stuff you are seeing on a webside is hosted there.
http://www.edgecast.com/customers/
http://aws.amazon.com/cloudfront/

[patrickjdempsey]

Amazon runs the world's largest collection of cloud servers, and they offer free space for limited bandwidth and small projects. This model is becoming popular because they can offer greater speed, and less maintenance that locally-hosted servers. Companies can even grow the number of servers they need to use on-the-fly based on demand within a few minutes. The Amazon Web Services is a completely separate business from the Amazon website.

[KarmaQ]

See if this helps - firefox keeps trying to connect to a website

[pedropt]

My firefox was always connecting to a different ip address with everything disabled , so i decided to lookup on the web .
I found this page :
https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/ho ... onnections

But even after all these changes , firefox continued to connect to a different ip address everytime i start it .
My solution was to configure in my firewall to block those ip addresses .
Depending on each version of firefox , you may get different ip ranges , i remember that in previous version i had to block other ips .
Right now with 43.0.1 version i had to block all these ips :
54.69.17.198
52.25.175.6
52.89.156.147
54.187.236.54
54.201.205.104
54.187.236.54
52.34.183.103
52.24.240.17
52.88.160.224
52.25.207.177
54.68.236.208
52.24.153.184
54.68.114.20
52.88.154.16
54.149.54.54
52.39.167.165
52.85.47.68

When 1 ip is blocked then firefox tries another , and uses this process until it ends its ip list .
Firefox connects on port 443 each time you start it to one of these servers , and most of them are from amazon .

[therube]

(There was a thread in these parts about sites FF "connects" to. I'd think your "amazon" hits are dealing with the check for updates, as they are [now] served via amazon ws [aws].)

[Grumpus]

Due to a number of various government agencies, software developers and operating systems updates relying on Amazon Web Services it is virtually impossible to stop.
In some cases it is deeply embedded in the systems you put on you computer and will circumvent safeguards, essentially breaking some of your security.
You will always get the same answer when doing a search with the exception the sub-net or IP range may change.
However, it makes sense to look sometimes because hits are not always from a legitimate source.
Some of the IP information providers will also indicate known spammers, hackers or malware while still identifying the IP number as AmazonAWS.
Amazon system is set up to automatically either supply or write a new IP number.
This system currently blocks several hundred IP ranges and once in a while some get through.
Reason I do it is Amazon only regards customers as far as the bottom line, after that you don't count, if you do not spend or use the service they will eventually fade away.

[pedropt]

"(There was a thread in these parts about sites FF "connects" to. I'd think your "amazon" hits are dealing with the check for updates, as they are [now] served via amazon ws [aws].)"

are you serious ?!!!
When i wrote that i disabled everything possibly configurable in about:config and plugins and other options in "preferences" , i mean everything .

This is firefox behavior when you start it after i shutdown those ips in my firewall :
https://s31.postimg.org/quyadvnyj/firefox.jpg

IF one ip gets a connection established , then firefox stops the cycle at that ip .
I the image above Firefox tries to sync with the servers , bu i have my firewall configured to drop requests to those ips , so when firefox detects that it can not connect to them they turn to red .

[Grumpus]

Would you like my list?
If your firewall blocks those IPs effectively you should be able to block most of Amazon by just putting in the IP ranges 54.0.0.0/8; 52.0.0.0/8.
Note some will only be blocked when putting in individual IP numbers but will still pass connections listed in some sub-nets due to Internet rules.

[pedropt]

i know that , but i do not want to block my firewall when i really want to go to amazon.com to search for something .

http://www.tcpiputils.com/browse/domain/amazon.com

[Grumpus]

Problem is you are dealing with cloud technology. It's what it is without some of the old restrictions or controls.
There's an article in the Register this morning which gives a vague clue to some of the problems.
Cloud Procurement
Looking to see what an IP really is would go a long way to helping and avoiding but if the IP changes in the particular network for the same site it will make little difference the next time you see the hit.
What you could do is go to Amazon.com and look for what ever it is and look at the IP ranges and see if they duplicate the ones you are trying to block.
Sometimes it may be a different sub-net IP range which is not affected by the blocking.

[therube]

Connections established on startup - Firefox

How to stop Firefox from making automatic connections

[pedropt]

this is the behavior of firefox at start up with every ip blocked , but after a few days it gets 1 or 2 new ips to the list .

Video
http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x4mqmap

[Grumpus]

For some reason the audio was playing but there was no visual.
Maybe just a couple of fixed screen shots.