Indeed, the only thing WhatsApp-specific in this story is that WhatsApp engineers are the ones pointing out this attack vector and saying someone should maybe do something about it. A lot of the replies here don’t seem to understand that this vulnerability applies equally to almost all messaging apps - hardly any of them even pad their messages to a fixed size, much less send cover traffic and/or delay messages. 😦
This is not a WhatsApp exclusive problem. MITM traffic analysis for metadata packet interception is a common technique.
Indeed, the only thing WhatsApp-specific in this story is that WhatsApp engineers are the ones pointing out this attack vector and saying someone should maybe do something about it. A lot of the replies here don’t seem to understand that this vulnerability applies equally to almost all messaging apps - hardly any of them even pad their messages to a fixed size, much less send cover traffic and/or delay messages. 😦