Directed and Undirected Vertex Connectivity Problems are Equivalent for Dense Graphs

Vertex connectivity and its variants are among the most fundamental problems in graph theory, with decades of extensive study and numerous algorithmic advances. The directed variants of vertex connectivity are usually solved by manually extending fast algorithms for undirected graphs, which has required considerable effort. In this paper, we present a simple, black-box randomized reduction from directed to undirected vertex connectivity for dense graphs. As immediate corollaries, we largely simplify the proof for directed vertex connectivity in n²⁺ᵒ⁽¹⁾ time [LNP+25], and obtain a parallel vertex connectivity algorithm for directed graphs with nω+o(1) work and nᵒ⁽¹⁾ depth, via the undirected vertex connectivity algorithm of [BJMY25]. Our reduction further extends to the weighted version of the problem. By combining our reduction with the recent subcubic-time algorithm for undirected weighted vertex cuts [CT25], we obtain the first subcubic-time algorithm for weighted directed vertex connectivity, improving upon a three-decade-old bound [HRG00] for dense graphs.