🌐 When Security Isn’t Global: How the 7-Zip CVE Exposed a Hidden Weakness in Cybersecurity Intelligence

When a critical vulnerability hits a widely-used tool like 7-Zip, you’d expect the entire cybersecurity world to react at the same time.

But the recent case of CVE-2025-11001 and CVE-2025-11002 shows something very different:

👉 Security threats are global.

👉 Security awareness is NOT.

This gap — between when a threat exists and when different language communities hear about it — can expose millions of users to exploitation long before English-language sources catch up.

This is the story of how a 7-Zip vulnerability went public…

yet half the world didn’t hear about it until much later.

🧨 What Happened: The 7-Zip Exploit Everyone Missed (Except China)

At the heart of this discussion are two linked vulnerabilities:

🔸 CVE-2025-11001 — Symlink Directory Traversal

🔸 CVE-2025-11002 — Hardlink Arbitrary File Overwrite

These flaws allow a malicious ZIP file to:

1. Write files outside the extraction folder
2. Drop payloads into Startup folders
3. Overwrite system/application files
4. Potentially achieve remote code execution

This is NOT because 7-Zip was hacked or compromised —

but because of a design flaw in how 7-Zip handles symlinks and hardlinks inside ZIP archives.

When exploited, a simple ZIP file could cause 7-Zip to write files into directories like:

…which means malware could run automatically on next login.

🇨🇳 The Twist: Chinese Security Researchers Reported It First

Here’s where things get interesting.

When the vulnerability first surfaced, English-language security sources showed nothing.

Search engines returned no major alerts.

No English cybersecurity news outlets were discussing it.

But Chinese cybersecurity communities?

They were already:

1. Publishing detailed analyses
2. Reproducing the exploit
3. Sharing PoCs
4. Demonstrating startup-folder payload drops
5. Flagging urgent warnings
6. Advising immediate upgrades

Chinese platforms like:

1. FreeBuf
2. 昆仑实验室 / 奇安信天穹沙箱
3. CN-SEC
4. 安全客
5. 知乎安全技术圈

…were filled with reproduction logs and technical discussions, weeks or months before English platforms caught up.

Why the delay?

Because Google, Bing, and English vulnerability feeds do not index Chinese cybersecurity content quickly — sometimes not at all.

🌐 Global Threat, Local Awareness

This 7-Zip case revealed an uncomfortable truth:

❗ Cybersecurity threats are global

❗ Cybersecurity intelligence is local

Different regions get threat information at very different speeds:

This means an English-speaking IT administrator could search for:

“7-Zip exploit”

…and receive zero results,

even though Chinese security labs had already:

1. reproduced attacks
2. documented arbitrary write
3. proved startup injection
4. linked CVEs
5. warned enterprise users
6. recommended immediate updating

This is exactly what happened.

📉 Why This Matters

If your threat intelligence depends solely on English sources:

❌ You will learn about some threats months late

❌ You will miss early PoCs and first-wave exploits

❌ You may believe “no exploit exists” when it actually does

❌ Attackers who read CN/RU sources will know earlier than you

❌ Your patching timeline will be behind the curve

The 7-Zip case is not an exception — it’s a pattern.

🛠️ Why 7-Zip Users Were Upgrading While Some English Searches Still Said “No Exploit”

Because:

1. 7-Zip developers knew and patched it
2. Chinese researchers publicized it
3. Enterprises started upgrading
4. CN-language security feeds spread the warnings
5. English feeds were late to index
6. Many English CVE databases had incomplete entries

This is how you get the contradictory situation:

Half the world is patching and upgrading…

while English search suggests “no known exploit.”

The vulnerability was never secret —

English indexing was just slow.

💬 So Is Security “Local”?

Impact? → Global

Everyone is vulnerable.

Information? → Local

Awareness depends on language and region.

Who suffers?

The groups who rely on a single-language security feed.

🚨 Lessons Learned

1. Don’t rely on English security sources alone.
2. CN/RU cybersecurity communities often publish FIRST.
3. Search-engine visibility ≠ security reality.
4. Vulnerabilities can be public, yet effectively “invisible” in English.
5. Multilingual threat intelligence is no longer optional — it’s required.

📚 Reference Sources

These are representative, stable, and widely available references confirming the exploit, without linking to fragile pages:

1. Search: “7-Zip CVE-2025-11001 中文 分析”
2. Search: “7-Zip CVE-2025-11002 目录穿越 漏洞”
3. CN-SEC Security Community
4. 奇安信 天穹沙箱报告
5. FreeBuf 漏洞分析专栏
6. MITRE CVE Database (pending full description for CVE-2025-11001/11002)
7. 7-Zip official changelog (version 25.00 fixing symlink/hardlink ZIP issues)

📌 Final Thoughts

The 7-Zip CVE didn’t just expose a vulnerability in the software —

it exposed a vulnerability in how the world spreads cybersecurity information.

If we want true global security,

we need global threat intelligence,

not single-language tunnels.