I'm having a weird networking problem with my EC2 instance running Amazon Linux 2023. When I try to access port 8080 from my laptop, I get an "Empty reply from server" message, but if I curl the same port from the instance itself, it says "Connection refused". I checked and there seems to be nothing listening on that port. For comparison, when I try to access a different port like 8088, it times out like I expect due to a security group blocking it. I've stopped Docker (which was installed but not running any containers), checked iptables, and the instance has an Elastic IP attached. What's strange is that the "empty reply" means a TCP handshake is definitely happening but there's nothing listening on the instance. What could be causing this? Any ideas?
1 Answer
Could it be that you're on a corporate network that does HTTPS interception? That might explain the empty replies you’re seeing. Just a thought!
That makes sense! I actually figured it out — I was still connected to NordVPN from earlier and I think that might have been interfering.