Can someone hack into phone via home Wi-Fi?

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Polestar

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One for the IT experts...

A friend is sharing a house with 3 others. They share the one broadband. My friend is not IT savvy at all.

He was watching a video in YouTube within Chrome on his Android phone. He stopped it mid-way and left the tab open (he can have many tabs opened at the same time).

The weird thing is he then heard the video he had just stopped playing somewhere else. He went out of his room and realised it was playing in the room across the landing. As he was alone in the house, he entered the room and saw the exact same video playing on this housemate's TV. This housemate is an IT expert.

This is at least suspicious. Are we being paranoid or is there something sinister here?

We have discounted the cast option.

Any ideas please?
 
Unlikely he pressed the cast button. He says he stopped the video plus he doesn't even know what casting is..

But for that to happen the housemate would have had to leave the TV on too?
 
Protocol said:
If at some stage in the past, a cast connection has been created between the phone and a smart TV, then that connection is not forgotten.
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My friend doesn't know anything about casting so he would not have created that connection. He and his housemate are not friends and don't share time into each other's rooms.
 
My partner also doesn't have a clue about casting.
It doesn't stop him from hitting the cast button accidentally though and all of a sudden his video from his phone starts playing on the main TV.
He blames fat fingers :)
 
Assuming he hit the cast button accidentally: When I cast I have to hit the cast button and then select the device I want to cast to. That's 2 clicks, which would be even more unlikely in this case.

Is there a way of casting with 1 click?
 
That's very interesting, @Leo.

However:

My friend swears he was watching in Chrome and not the app.

I've just gone into the Watch on TV settings of my YouTube app and I have to first LINK to the TV to watch it. Unlikely that my friend did that.

EDIT: Could this have happened from the YouTube app on the TV itself?
 
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When I am in certain apps my Sony Bravia TV comes up as a 'Network' option just like the home wifi and neighbours houses etc.

Don't fully understand it but I would think it's to do with way the TV is added to the shared Wifi in the house.
 
It's not very likely that he's "hacking into a phone".

On the other hand, I can think of two very easy ways for him to see what other roomates are doing on the house wifi.

1. If he has access to the router he could make changes (for example to the dns servers used) and monitor traffic that way. A bit like how parental control software works.
2. He could use packet sniffing software e.g. Wireshark to record network traffic and analyse it later. There are a plethora of tools available for free that can do this e.g. Netwitness Investigator.

If your friend is worried, they could stop using wifi and use their mobile data instead. Or if they want to continue using wifi using a VPN might be an option.
 
Páid said:
On the other hand, I can think of two very easy ways for him to see what other roomates are doing on the house wifi.

1. If he has access to the router he could make changes (for example to the dns servers used) and monitor traffic that way. A bit like how parental control software works.
2. He could use packet sniffing software e.g. Wireshark to record network traffic and analyse it later. There are a plethora of tools available for free that can do this e.g. Netwitness Investigator.
Click to expand...
Good luck with that!
Polestar said:
My friend is not IT savvy at all
Click to expand...
 
Páid said:
He could use packet sniffing software e.g. Wireshark to record network traffic and analyse it later. There are a plethora of tools available for free that can do this e.g. Netwitness Investigator.
Click to expand...
It's all https nowadays. The most he could tell would be that the traffic was being sent to youtube.com he wouldn't be able to see which video was being requested.
 
I agree with others who reckon that there's probably some logical explanation here, likely something that the person did to inadvertently cause the YouTube content to play on the local TV, rather than it being some sort of hacking job. But it's difficult to properly diagnose/understand such issues remotely and with only (possibly incomplete) second hand info.
 
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