Clear signing: Cyfrin identifies hidden fields

At the end of July 2026, the auditing firm Cyfrin classified several defects of 1inch's clear signing as having a severity level of << high >>. Thus, certain fields, including the contract that receives the funds committed by the user, do not appear on the wallet screen. As of October 12, these display rules are still listed in the public registry. They cover the 1inch V6 router across 13 networks, including Ethereum.

In brief

• 13 networks: this is the number of blockchains, including Ethereum, on which the audited descriptor of the 1inch V6 router applies.
• 2 << high >> defects: Cyfrin identified these in this descriptor, including a field that designates the contract receiving your funds.
• No attestation: the descriptors of the V6 router have not received any audit validation in the registry.
• May 12, 2026: on this day, Ledger entrusted the clear signing to the Ethereum Foundation.

Clear signing, a response to the Bybit hack

In February 2025, the record hack of Bybit cost the platform approximately $1.5 billion, according to the FBI. The FBI also attributes this theft to North Korea. According to CertiK's analysis, the Safe{Wallet} interface displayed a legitimate transaction. However, the data sent to Ledger for signing was different. The CEO of Bybit stated that he did not verify them on the device's screen. CertiK refers to this as blind signing.

Clear signing addresses this issue. It translates the data of a transaction into clear language on your crypto wallet screen. Ledger launched it in 2023 and then formalized it in the ERC-7730 standard proposal. Subsequently, on May 12, 2026, the company entrusted its management to the Ethereum Foundation. MetaMask, Trezor, WalletConnect, and Cyfrin participate in the working group.

The system relies on public files, called descriptors. Each indicates to the wallet which fields of a transaction to display and under what label. A field marked << never >> will therefore never appear on the screen.

The contract that receives your funds can remain invisible

1inch is a decentralized exchange aggregator. Cyfrin has audited several of its descriptors. Ticket No. 2688 targets the main descriptor of the V6 router. It indeed counts two high severity findings and three medium severity findings, according to the auditor's classification.

The first finding concerns the clipperExchange parameter, which is hidden on the screen. It designates the contract that receives the user's funds. It is the caller of the function that provides this parameter. According to Cyfrin, the wallet thus displays a normal exchange screen without showing the contract that receives the funds.

The second high finding targets the args field, which is also hidden. In certain execution modes of an order, it may contain the address that receives the purchased asset. The user may then see exact amounts, while the asset goes to an address they do not see, according to the auditor.

Two medium findings also concern the display. First, the amount of an order always appears as an amount << for sale >>. However, one mode of the router treats it as an amount to buy. Then, the permitAndCall function hides an authorization for expenditure that may specify the token, the address authorized to spend, the amount, and the deadline. Finally, the last medium finding concerns deployments that Sourcify had not yet verified.

1inch's clear signing unchanged across 13 networks

A neighboring ticket, number 2690, targeted the zkSync version of the router. This nine-line descriptor referred to the same common file as the main version. The maintainers removed it from the registry on September 22. The reason is indeed related to verification. Sourcify, the code verification tool used by the registry, does not yet know how to verify the compiled code for zkSync. Therefore, this removal does not correct the display rules.

However, the main branch of the registry, consulted on October 12, still contains these rules. The common file and the main descriptor date, in their current version, from April 10, 2026. They apply to the V6 router across 13 networks, including Ethereum, Arbitrum, Base, BNB Chain, and Polygon. The descriptor for the previous version, V5, also masks clipperExchange on six networks.

A third audit, number 2689, concerns off-chain signed orders in EIP-712 format. The descriptor masks the makerTraits field. It can contain the expiration date of the order and a restriction on the address authorized to execute it. Cyfrin also classifies this finding as high severity.

An attestation does not guarantee the displayed meaning

The registry provides a safeguard, the attestation. The draft standard ERC-8176 defines this mechanism. It allows an auditor to sign a descriptor they have reviewed. On August 17, the registry integrated attestations from Cyfrin for 181 descriptors.

In the 1inch file, only the older V3 and V4 versions of the router carry one. In contrast, the V6 descriptors do not have one. In audit number 2689, Cyfrin notes the absence of code verification on five networks: << the attestation condition is not met >> (translation from the editorial). ERC-8176 then leaves it to each wallet to choose the auditors they trust.

However, even if attested, a descriptor can be misleading. The ERC-8176 project states this in its section on the limitations of the mechanism.

The verification of the signature does not validate semantic accuracy. ERC-8176, Descriptor Attestations for ERC-7730, draft standard

Another limitation concerns upgradeable contracts, or proxies. A proxy retains its address, but its code can change. An analysis published in September listed 80 descriptors related to proxies out of 382, as of September 5. The maintainers then chose to keep them and address the issue in the standard itself.

What clear signing displays, and what it omits

The registry also corrects defects. On September 25, a fix targeted another descriptor of 1inch, for limit orders of its Limit Order Protocol v2. According to its message, wallets that recognize descriptors by the signed type could not apply it. Users were therefore signing these orders << blindly >>.

For the user, a readable screen only displays the fields retained by the descriptor. Thus, the absence of a recipient or an expiration date is not visible. Cyfrin recommends displaying these fields or removing the description. In the latter case, the wallet reverts to a raw signature, without giving an impression of clarity. None of the tickets consulted report a loss of users related to these descriptors. Our guide on the most secure crypto wallet details other available protections.

As of October 12, the two audited V6 descriptors still present in the registry remain unchanged. The third, for zkSync, has left the registry without correction. For the makerTraits field, the correction proposed by Cyfrin modifies a single line of the file to make the field visible. [TO BE COMPLETED: response dated from 1inch, Cyfrin, or the registry maintainers, or mention of requests that went unanswered] On the proxy side, proposal number 1738 has not yet been integrated into the standard. Kaan Uzdoğan, co-author of ERC-7730, indicated on GitHub that he was waiting for further reviews before approving it.