Abstract:

With the rapid development of information technology, Internet is playing an increasingly important role across the world. A trustworthy cyberspace has been closely related to national interests and has become a focus of national security and social stability. However, current security research often focuses on specific technical problems and challenges.This methodology is sometimes termed engineering . We don’t have a clear understanding of many fundamental problems and universal laws of cybersecurity. That is, cybersecurity research lacks a firm scientific foundation and disciplined approach to transcend specific systems, attacks, and defenses. In contrast to the engineering approach, the past few years we have seen a growing push within the research community to promote the study of cybersecurity as a science. In this paper, we introduce the background of developing a science of cybersecurity , depict the scientific connotation of cybersecurity and discuss five of the “hard problems” in the science of cybersecurity . Finally , the perspective of research is also proposed.

Key words: cybersecurity, scientific foundation, hard problems