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arXiv · 2605.06205

ClawGuard: Out-of-Band Detection of LLM Agent Workflow Hijacking via EM Side Channel

Leo Linqian Gan·Jeffery Wu·Longyuan Ge·Lanqing Yang·Yonghao Song·Jingkai Zhang·Haojia Jin·Weiyi Wang·Guangtao Xue
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Abstract

Autonomous LLM agents face a critical security risk known as workflow hijacking, where attackers subtly alter tool and skill invocations. Existing defenses rely on host-internal telemetry (such as audit logs), which can be forged if the host OS is compromised. To solve this, we introduce ClawGuard, a passive, out-of-band monitor that audits LLM-agent workflows using electromagnetic (EM) emanations. Because distinct agent skills create unique hardware usage patterns (computation, DRAM, network blocking), they emit measurable, macroscopic EM envelopes. External software-defined radios (SDRs) capture these physical signals. Using a drift-aware pipeline with 320-dimensional features, ClawGuard converts RF streams into physical evidence. Evaluated on a 7.82TB RF corpus, ClawGuard achieved an AUC of 0.9945, detecting attacks with a 100% true-positive rate and a 1.16% false-positive rate. This proves passive EM sensing is a practical, forge-resistant physical check against compromised host software.

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Leo Linqian Gan, Jeffery Wu, Longyuan Ge, Lanqing Yang, Yonghao Song, Jingkai Zhang, Haojia Jin, Weiyi Wang, Guangtao Xue. 2026-05-07. ClawGuard: Out-of-Band Detection of LLM Agent Workflow Hijacking via EM Side Channel. https://arxiv.org/abs/2605.06205

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