At least one attack is currently worded in terms of identifying change. For example:
I B (992616b5f39e8ee98e07026f40798b002307e741ff6e8343f2a1bc964302f173): Link outputs in a transaction to a single entity by detecting which output is a change output
For transactions that involve more than two recipients of outputs (sender, receiver), the more general version of this idea is to identify output ownership rather than "change".