{"status":"ok","message-type":"work","message-version":"1.0.0","message":{"indexed":{"date-parts":[[2026,2,26]],"date-time":"2026-02-26T17:13:48Z","timestamp":1772126028131,"version":"3.50.1"},"reference-count":25,"publisher":"MDPI AG","issue":"9","license":[{"start":{"date-parts":[[2020,5,11]],"date-time":"2020-05-11T00:00:00Z","timestamp":1589155200000},"content-version":"vor","delay-in-days":0,"URL":"https:\/\/summer-heart-0930.chufeiyun1688.workers.dev:443\/https\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by\/4.0\/"}],"content-domain":{"domain":[],"crossmark-restriction":false},"short-container-title":["Sensors"],"abstract":"<jats:p>The massive Internet of Things (IoT) connecting various types of intelligent sensors for goods tracking in logistics, environmental monitoring and smart grid management is a crucial future ICT. High-end security and low power consumption are major requirements in scaling up the IoT. In this research, we propose an efficient data-hiding scheme to deal with the security problems and power saving issues of multimedia communication among IoT devises. Data hiding is the practice of hiding secret data into cover images in order to conceal and prevent secret data from being intercepted by malicious attackers. One of the established research streams of data-hiding methods is based on reference matrices (RM). In this study, we propose an efficient data-hiding scheme based on multidimensional mini-SuDoKu RM. The proposed RM possesses high complexity and can effectively improve the security of data hiding. In addition, this study also defines a range locator function which can significantly improve the embedding efficiency of multidimensional RM. Experimental results show that our data-hiding scheme can not only obtain better image quality, but also achieve higher embedding capacity than other related schemes.<\/jats:p>","DOI":"10.3390\/s20092739","type":"journal-article","created":{"date-parts":[[2020,5,11]],"date-time":"2020-05-11T12:26:30Z","timestamp":1589199990000},"page":"2739","update-policy":"https:\/\/summer-heart-0930.chufeiyun1688.workers.dev:443\/https\/doi.org\/10.3390\/mdpi_crossmark_policy","source":"Crossref","is-referenced-by-count":25,"title":["An Efficient Data-Hiding Scheme Based on Multidimensional Mini-SuDoKu"],"prefix":"10.3390","volume":"20","author":[{"ORCID":"https:\/\/summer-heart-0930.chufeiyun1688.workers.dev:443\/https\/orcid.org\/0000-0002-2134-5257","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Ji-Hwei","family":"Horng","sequence":"first","affiliation":[{"name":"Department of Electronic Engineering, National Quemoy University, Kinmen 89250, Taiwan"}]},{"given":"Shuying","family":"Xu","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Department of Information Engineering and Computer Science, Feng Chia University, Taichung 40724, Taiwan"}]},{"given":"Ching-Chun","family":"Chang","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Department of Electronic Engineering, Tsinghua University, Beijing 100084, China"}]},{"given":"Chin-Chen","family":"Chang","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Department of Information Engineering and Computer Science, Feng Chia University, Taichung 40724, Taiwan"},{"name":"School of Computer Science and Technology, Hangzhou Dianzi University, Hangzhou 310018, China"}]}],"member":"1968","published-online":{"date-parts":[[2020,5,11]]},"reference":[{"key":"ref_1","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Matsui, M. (1993). Linear cryptanalysis scheme for DES cipher. Workshop on the Theory and Application of Cryptographic Techniques, Springer.","DOI":"10.1007\/3-540-48285-7_33"},{"key":"ref_2","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"120","DOI":"10.1145\/359340.359342","article-title":"A scheme for obtaining digital signatures and public-key cryptosystems","volume":"21","author":"Rivest","year":"1978","journal-title":"Commun. ACM"},{"key":"ref_3","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Ullah, S., Marcenaro, L., and Rinner, B. (2019). Secure smart cameras by aggregate-signcryption with decryption fairness for multi-receiver IoT applications. Sensors, 19.","DOI":"10.3390\/s19020327"},{"key":"ref_4","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Li, Y., Tu, Y., Lu, J., and Wang, Y. (2020). A security transmission and storage solution about sensing image for blockchain in the Internet of Things. Sensors, 20.","DOI":"10.3390\/s20030916"},{"key":"ref_5","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"97","DOI":"10.1007\/978-3-540-30114-1_8","article-title":"Improved detection of LSB steganography in grayscale images","volume":"Volume 3200","author":"Ker","year":"2004","journal-title":"International Workshop on Information Hiding"},{"key":"ref_6","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"1109","DOI":"10.1109\/TCSVT.2012.2224052","article-title":"An inpainting-assisted reversible steganographic scheme using a histogram shifting mechanism","volume":"23","author":"Qin","year":"2012","journal-title":"IEEE Trans. Circuits Syst. Video Technol."},{"key":"ref_7","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"2768","DOI":"10.1016\/j.ins.2007.02.019","article-title":"Reversible hiding in DCT-based compressed images","volume":"177","author":"Chang","year":"2007","journal-title":"Inf. Sci."},{"key":"ref_8","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"1610","DOI":"10.1109\/TCSVT.2015.2473235","article-title":"Reversible data hiding in JPEG images","volume":"26","author":"Huang","year":"2016","journal-title":"IEEE Trans. Circuits Syst. Video Technol."},{"key":"ref_9","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"1597","DOI":"10.1016\/j.patcog.2008.11.040","article-title":"A loss-less data embedding technique by joint neighboring coding","volume":"42","author":"Chang","year":"2009","journal-title":"Pattern Recog."},{"key":"ref_10","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"1715","DOI":"10.1016\/j.patcog.2006.02.005","article-title":"High capacity image hiding scheme based on vector quantization","volume":"39","author":"Hu","year":"2006","journal-title":"Pattern Recogn."},{"key":"ref_11","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Lin, Y., Hsia, C., Chen, B., and Chen, Y. (2019). Visual IoT security: Data hiding in AMBTC images using block-wise embedding strategy. Sensors, 19.","DOI":"10.3390\/s19091974"},{"key":"ref_12","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Chang, C., Wang, X., and Horng, J. (2019). A hybrid data hiding method for strict AMBTC format images with high-fidelity. Symmetry, 11.","DOI":"10.3390\/sym11101314"},{"key":"ref_13","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"313","DOI":"10.1147\/sj.353.0313","article-title":"Techniques for data hiding","volume":"35","author":"Bender","year":"1996","journal-title":"IBM Syst. J."},{"key":"ref_14","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"319","DOI":"10.1016\/j.camwa.2010.01.006","article-title":"Improved modification direction schemes","volume":"60","author":"Kim","year":"2010","journal-title":"Comput. Math. Appl."},{"key":"ref_15","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"285","DOI":"10.1109\/LSP.2006.870357","article-title":"LSB matching revisited","volume":"13","author":"Mielikainen","year":"2006","journal-title":"IEEE Signal Proc. Lett."},{"key":"ref_16","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"781","DOI":"10.1109\/LCOMM.2006.060863","article-title":"Efficient steganographic embedding by exploiting modification direction","volume":"10","author":"Zhang","year":"2006","journal-title":"IEEE Commun. Lett."},{"key":"ref_17","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"19045","DOI":"10.1007\/s11042-019-7252-x","article-title":"Extended squared magic matrix for embedding secret information with large payload","volume":"78","author":"Xie","year":"2019","journal-title":"Multimed. Tools Appl."},{"key":"ref_18","first-page":"836","article-title":"An image steganography scheme using 3D-Sudoku","volume":"7","author":"Xia","year":"2016","journal-title":"J. Inf. Hiding Multimed. Signal Process."},{"key":"ref_19","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Lin, C., Chang, C., Lee, W., and Lin, J. (2009, January 12\u201314). A Novel Secure Data Hiding Scheme Using a Secret Reference Matrix. Proceedings of the Fifth International Conference on Intelligent Information Hiding and Multimedia Signal Processing, Kyoto, Japan.","DOI":"10.1109\/IIH-MSP.2009.143"},{"key":"ref_20","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Chang, C., Chou, Y., and Kieu, T. (2008, January 18\u201320). An Information Hiding Scheme Using Sudoku. Proceedings of the 3rd International Conference on Innovative Computing Information and Control (ICICIC), Dalian, China.","DOI":"10.1109\/ICICIC.2008.149"},{"key":"ref_21","unstructured":"Hong, W., Chen, T., and Shiu, C. (2008, January 20\u201322). A Minimal Euclidean Distance Searching Technique for Sudoku Steganography. Proceedings of the International Symposium on Information Science and Engineering (ISISE2008), Shanghai, China."},{"key":"ref_22","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Chang, C., Liu, Y., and Nguyen, T. (2014, January 27\u201329). A Novel Turtle Shell Based Scheme for Data Hiding. Proceedings of the Tenth International Conference on Intelligent Information Hiding and Multimedia Signal Processing (IIHMSP 2014), Kitakyushu, Japan.","DOI":"10.1109\/IIH-MSP.2014.29"},{"key":"ref_23","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"130","DOI":"10.1049\/iet-ipr.2014.1015","article-title":"High capacity turtle shell-based data hiding","volume":"10","author":"Liu","year":"2016","journal-title":"IET Image Process."},{"key":"ref_24","first-page":"154","article-title":"Minimizing turtle shell matrix based stego image distortion using particle swarm optimization","volume":"19","author":"Jin","year":"2017","journal-title":"Netw. Secur."},{"key":"ref_25","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"141414","DOI":"10.1109\/ACCESS.2019.2943616","article-title":"A mini-Sudoku matrix-based data embedding scheme with high payload","volume":"7","author":"He","year":"2019","journal-title":"IEEE Access"}],"container-title":["Sensors"],"original-title":[],"language":"en","link":[{"URL":"https:\/\/summer-heart-0930.chufeiyun1688.workers.dev:443\/https\/www.mdpi.com\/1424-8220\/20\/9\/2739\/pdf","content-type":"unspecified","content-version":"vor","intended-application":"similarity-checking"}],"deposited":{"date-parts":[[2025,10,11]],"date-time":"2025-10-11T09:27:43Z","timestamp":1760174863000},"score":1,"resource":{"primary":{"URL":"https:\/\/summer-heart-0930.chufeiyun1688.workers.dev:443\/https\/www.mdpi.com\/1424-8220\/20\/9\/2739"}},"subtitle":[],"short-title":[],"issued":{"date-parts":[[2020,5,11]]},"references-count":25,"journal-issue":{"issue":"9","published-online":{"date-parts":[[2020,5]]}},"alternative-id":["s20092739"],"URL":"https:\/\/summer-heart-0930.chufeiyun1688.workers.dev:443\/https\/doi.org\/10.3390\/s20092739","relation":{},"ISSN":["1424-8220"],"issn-type":[{"value":"1424-8220","type":"electronic"}],"subject":[],"published":{"date-parts":[[2020,5,11]]}}}