What is steiner attack?

Steiner Attack is a type of attack in cryptography where an attacker tries to find a shorter path than the minimum distance between two nodes in a given graph. This technique is particularly useful when attacking cryptosystems that rely on error-correcting codes, such as the McEliece cryptosystem.

The Steiner Attack works by identifying the nodes or vertices that have an unusually high degree of connectivity, which suggests that they might be part of a shorter path. By identifying such nodes, the attacker can then modify the graph in a way that enables them to find a shorter path that could be used to break the cryptosystem.

This type of attack is named after mathematician Jakob Steiner, who was known for his work on geometric problems. The Steiner Attack has been successfully applied to various cryptosystems, including the Niederreiter cryptosystem and several variants of the McEliece cryptosystem. However, it is worth noting that the attack is not always successful and is sometimes thwarted by the use of additional security measures, such as randomization or the use of larger key sizes.