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I noticed on my router one or two hours ago that there were two new devices connected to it that I did not recognize. In a normal situation I would think that my WiFi password was just compromised, but I noticed that one of the connections was, according to my router, wired i.e. connected to my Ethernet.

The wired device was named Amazon-Linux-COMPUTER. I attempted to ping the IP address of the wired machine, but received no result.

I tried to perform a port scan about 15 minutes later and received a message that the host was offline; I rechecked the router and the wired device had disappeared.

What does this mean? Is someone really physically connected to my network, or can this be spoofed? Is there an intruder within my residence? (I know how ridiculous that sounds, that someone would come in for the sole purpose of connecting their Linux device to my Ethernet and nothing else, but I'm not sure if there is any other explanation.)

Here is the device as it appears in my router:

WiredAmazonAmazon-Linux-COMPUTER192.168.1.192.4G WirelessMARWY37600192.168.1.23

Amazon-Linux-COMPUTER: F8:54:B8:41:38:DE

I cannot ping the device nor perform a nmap on it (host offline), but my router says it is there.

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  • By any chance, do you have Ethernet over power adapters connected to your switch?
    – Jeroen
    Commented Aug 30, 2020 at 8:17
  • @Jeroen I don't have any adapters, but I do have multiple Ethernet ports in the walls; not sure if that makes a difference.
    – yeah22
    Commented Aug 30, 2020 at 8:24
  • I was thinking that perhaps with such adapters it could be possible for someone to 'hook in' if the electrical circuit was shared somehow.
    – Jeroen
    Commented Aug 30, 2020 at 8:58
  • This reminds me of a laptop I found this way and simply followed all the cables. I had forgotten it running under my bed a little over a year earlier, based on the uptime.
    – Esa Jokinen
    Commented Aug 30, 2020 at 13:11
  • 3
    Try black listing the two Mac addresses in the router and see what fails, for example Roku or a smart TV or a Tablet or E-reader.
    – user10216038
    Commented Aug 30, 2020 at 17:02

3 Answers 3

Reset to default
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The wired device turned out to be a lost Kindle. I found it earlier today and charged it, and when checking the router later discovered that the mysterious Amazon device was wireless instead of wired. I had my suspicions, and enabled airplane mode on the Kindle — the device switched from “Wireless” to “Wired” in the Netgear R7000 router.

I have no idea why the router switches the device to the wired connection instead of showing it as gone, but then finally does show it missing after a few minutes. I think that since the Kindle had been lost for a while, it was on extremely low battery and only connected to the network in order to make a few requests, making it immediately switch from wireless to wired after it was done. This also explains why it was not responding to any requests — it was not there at all in the first place.

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  • Did the MAC addresses match for Wi-Fi and wired? I found a similar wired entry where the name matches my laptop but shows a different MAC address (no IP address assigned). The laptop wasn't anywhere near the network at the time.
    – User5910
    Commented Mar 16, 2023 at 21:45
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You could try to use WireShark on your network and see if there is any traffic passing through from that device, and also see what kind of traffic (ex. is it going through Facebook, Twitter or anything else).

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You can best use mac based filtration in router, it will only those system who's mac you have allowed. Rest all connection will be dropped.

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