<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" standalone="yes"?><rss version="2.0" xmlns:atom="http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom"><channel><title>Contrastive Learning | Benjamin M. Ampel</title><link>https://bampel.com/tag/contrastive-learning/</link><atom:link href="https://bampel.com/tag/contrastive-learning/index.xml" rel="self" type="application/rss+xml"/><description>Contrastive Learning</description><generator>Wowchemy (https://wowchemy.com)</generator><language>en-us</language><lastBuildDate>Mon, 26 Oct 2026 00:00:00 +0000</lastBuildDate><image><url>https://bampel.com/media/icon_hu_cc9cb5646de94589.png</url><title>Contrastive Learning</title><link>https://bampel.com/tag/contrastive-learning/</link></image><item><title>Automated Cross-Repository Vulnerability Variant Retrieval Using Patch-Weighted Contrastive Learning</title><link>https://bampel.com/conference_publication/vuln-variant-cars-2026/</link><pubDate>Mon, 26 Oct 2026 00:00:00 +0000</pubDate><guid>https://bampel.com/conference_publication/vuln-variant-cars-2026/</guid><description>
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&lt;span class="pub-plain-tag">In Plain Terms&lt;/span>
&lt;p>When a security flaw is found in one open-source project, copies and near-copies of that same flawed code often live on in other projects. This paper presents AVA, a system that learns from known vulnerabilities and their fixes to automatically hunt down those unfixed look-alikes across many repositories at once. It shows that real-world patches can teach a model to tell vulnerable code from fixed code, extending remediation beyond the project where a flaw was first reported.&lt;/p>
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&lt;h3>Key Contributions&lt;/h3>
&lt;p class="pub-muted">Key contributions will be added soon.&lt;/p>
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&lt;h3>Artifacts&lt;/h3>
&lt;p class="pub-muted">No artifacts listed yet.&lt;/p>
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&lt;h3>Related Papers&lt;/h3>
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&lt;li>
&lt;a href="https://bampel.com/conference_publication/phishing-spw-2025/">Examining the Robustness of Machine Learning-based Phishing Website Detection: Action-Masked Reinforcement Learning for Automated Red Teaming&lt;/a>
&lt;span>2025 · IEEE SPW&lt;/span>
&lt;/li>
&lt;li>
&lt;a href="https://bampel.com/conference_publication/dtlel-isi/">Labeling Hacker Exploits for Proactive Cyber Threat Intelligence: A Deep Transfer Learning Approach&lt;/a>
&lt;span>2020 · IEEE ISI&lt;/span>
&lt;/li>
&lt;li>
&lt;a href="https://bampel.com/conference_publication/vuln-ci-isi/">Smart Vulnerability Assessment for Scientific Cyberinfrastructure: An Unsupervised Graph Embedding Approach&lt;/a>
&lt;span>2020 · IEEE ISI&lt;/span>
&lt;/li>
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&lt;h3>Citation&lt;/h3>
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&lt;div class="pub-citation-text">Joseph Chen, Benjamin M. Ampel, Steven Ullman, Raul Y. Reyes, &amp;amp; Hsinchun Chen (2026). Automated Cross-Repository Vulnerability Variant Retrieval Using Patch-Weighted Contrastive Learning. In *Proceedings of the 2026 IEEE Cyber Awareness and Research Symposium (CARS)*&lt;/div>
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&lt;/style></description></item><item><title>Vendor-Conditioned Contrastive Learning for Predicting Organizational Cyber Threat Targets</title><link>https://bampel.com/conference_publication/vendor-conditioned-contrastive-learning-for-predicting-organizational-/</link><pubDate>Mon, 26 Oct 2026 00:00:00 +0000</pubDate><guid>https://bampel.com/conference_publication/vendor-conditioned-contrastive-learning-for-predicting-organizational-/</guid><description>
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&lt;span class="pub-plain-tag">In Plain Terms&lt;/span>
&lt;p>This paper presents TRACE, a model that reads exploit posts from hacker forums and exploit databases to predict which kind of organization an attack targets. By tailoring its learning to the software vendor involved and testing on data from later time periods than it trained on, TRACE stays accurate as threats evolve, reaching a 97% macro F1-score and beating a wide range of traditional and deep learning baselines. It is the substantially expanded successor to the earlier HackER &amp;#34;Predicting Organizational Cybersecurity Risk&amp;#34; preprint.&lt;/p>
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&lt;h3>Key Contributions&lt;/h3>
&lt;p class="pub-muted">Key contributions will be added soon.&lt;/p>
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&lt;li>
&lt;a href="https://bampel.com/conference_publication/dtlel-isi/">Labeling Hacker Exploits for Proactive Cyber Threat Intelligence: A Deep Transfer Learning Approach&lt;/a>
&lt;span>2020 · IEEE ISI&lt;/span>
&lt;/li>
&lt;li>
&lt;a href="https://bampel.com/journal_publication/dtl-el-misq/">Creating Proactive Cyber Threat Intelligence with Hacker Exploit Labels: A Deep Transfer Learning Approach&lt;/a>
&lt;span>2024 · MIS Quarterly&lt;/span>
&lt;/li>
&lt;li>
&lt;a href="https://bampel.com/journal_publication/phish-dtrap/">Evading Anti-Phishing Models: A Field Note Documenting an Experience in the Machine Learning Security Evasion Competition 2022&lt;/a>
&lt;span>2023 · Digital Threats: Research and Practice&lt;/span>
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&lt;h3>Citation&lt;/h3>
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&lt;div class="pub-citation-text">Benjamin M. Ampel (2026). Vendor-Conditioned Contrastive Learning for Predicting Organizational Cyber Threat Targets. In *Proceedings of the 2026 IEEE Cyber Awareness and Research Symposium (CARS)*&lt;/div>
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