[Friday_]

Can someone explain, how can this be used over unsecure networks. You still have metadata leak. Right? Operator knows exactly who is talking to whom(?) An sees that it is encrypted, then just prevents communication or sends someone to location.

[randomhodler84]

Right. Block and stream Ciphers themselves can only protect message content. The leak the message length and any peer metadata during the exchange. A perfect cipher produces a message that is indistinguishable from randomness, and can encode all possible messages. This is an intrinsic problem, when we want to hide the cipher texts existence, we usually call that steganography which is a different class of problem. Likewise, hiding the communication graph or message length is more akin to mixnets and anonymity networks/routing.

It’s three classes of problems, of which encryption is the base layer, but we need more constructions to achieve the other layers.

[Arnt]

Yes, you have a metadata leak. But you can send an urgent request for more … without revealing exactly what you're running out of.

[selfhoster11]

If the idea is to transmit a planned time to initiate an offensive, or some other orders that will not be carried out immediately, then it certainly makes sense.