Week 15: Advanced Topics and Course Wrap-Up
Dates: Apr 19-23 · Reading: Handout 13: Advanced Topics and Future Threats
The last new-content week. Monday: advanced ML techniques that beat the “lots of data, few labels” problem (transfer, few-shot, and federated learning - with a real learning-curve demo), the emerging AI-enabled threats on the horizon, and where the field is headed. Wednesday: we connect the whole course into one arc and prepare for Exam 4 (Weeks 10-16). Lab 12 (Tabletop) is due; Quiz 12 this week.
Learning Objectives
- Describe transfer, few-shot, and federated learning and their security uses
- Identify emerging AI and cybersecurity threats and the arms race
- Synthesize course concepts into one integrated security-and-AI strategy
- Prepare for Exam 4 and for real-world roles
Lecture Slides
⬇ Monday: Advanced Topics & Emerging Threats (PPTX) ⬇ Wednesday: Course Synthesis & Exam-4 Prep (PPTX)
Monday Session
Why advanced techniques matter: security has lots of data but few labels. Transfer learning (reuse a pretrained model; a real demo shows ~20 labels matching ~640 from scratch), few-shot learning (learn a threat from a handful of examples), and federated learning (shared model, private data). Then emerging threats - AI-generated malware, poisoning at scale, deepfakes-as-a-service, autonomous agents - the arms race, and the future of AI + cybersecurity.
Wednesday Session
Synthesis & Exam-4 prep: the four units of the course as one connected arc, the recurring through-lines (defense in depth, human oversight, trade-offs, designed-in trust), a rapid self-test, and a look at careers and next steps with open Q&A.
Lab
Lab 12 (Tabletop Incident Response) is due this week - submit the worksheet in Canvas. There is no new lab this week; you have now completed all 12 hands-on labs.
Quiz / This Week
Quiz 12 (this week). Transfer, few-shot, and federated learning; why labels are scarce; emerging threats and the arms race; the future of AI + cybersecurity; and light synthesis of the course.
In-Class Activity
Domain Adaptation with Limited Labels — CTFd capture-the-flag challenge (Colab + browser). Graded, 20 points.
⬇ Activity slides (PPTX) 📄 Student worksheet (PDF)
🚩 CTF challenge starter (.ipynb)