1 A method for mitigating a weakness in the Cellular Message Encryption Algorithm (CMEA), the weakness being an exploitable statistical characteristic of using a Cellular Authentication and Voice Encryption algorithm (CAVE) table in a substitution box, the method comprising: generating a first permutation table; generating a second permutation table; and using the first permutation table and the second permutation table in the substitution box of the CMEA to generate a first substitution value and a second substitution value, wherein the first substitution value and the second substitution value are permutations of equal significance.