Under the present invention, a state machine representation is used to encrypt/decrypt a message of data values. The state machine representation includes a plurality of nodes, wherein each of the data values are assigned to at least one of the plurality of nodes, wherein each of the plurality of nodes includes one or more transition vectors that each have a unique value, and wherein each of the one or more transition vectors starts from one of the plurality of nodes and leads to another one of the plurality of nodes. To encrypt the message, a sequence of transition vectors is traversed from a start node. As the transitional vectors are traversed, the corresponding unique values are recorded in sequence. When one of the data values is encountered at a node, a random number is generated and recorded in the sequence. Once all data values have been encountered, a string of the recorded unique values and the random values is outputted to a recipient.