Psalm 119:110 – Trap

The wicked have set a trap for me,
but I have not veered from your precepts.

A couple of famous Bible stories come to mind as I read this. The first is Samson and Delilah. Over and over she begs him for the secret of his strength, and each time she invites his enemies to attack. One wonders why Samson never figures out that it isn’t a good idea to tell her. Or perhaps he always knew it wasn’t a good idea, but let himself get led astray.

The story, as odd as it may seem, deals with human nature. I mention frequently on my computer services blog that computer hacking is rarely like it’s presented in the movies. It’s usually based on human engineering. Early in my business I went to an office to repair a computer. When I got there I was pointed to the computer and the user went into another room. I sat down and got to work. I was nearly done when she got back.

Suddenly she said, “Oh! I forgot to give you my password!”

“I’m almost done,” I replied.

“How?” she asked.

I pointed at the sticky note on the wall just to the right of her monitor on which the password was prominently written. That surprised her a bit, but did not surprise me. It’s human nature. We talk about wanting security, but what we really want is convenience. We don’t want to go to the trouble of looking up our password in a book or in an encrypted file. So we take a shortcut.

This leads me to an attack form called an “MFA Fatigue Attack.” When I first heard that name, I immediately loved it. It so speaks to the human nature issue. “MFA” is multi-factor authentication. Many of you will have been pressured to apply MFA to various of your accounts. I sincerely hope you have given in to this pressure, as it’s an important improvement in your security.

But there’s a trick that the bad guys play, which is to ask you, often in a text, for your MFA code. Most people will ignore this request or refuse it the first time. But if the attacker keeps going, some users will give in from fatigue and send the code. Then the attacker can get into the account.

This is a perfect example of the sort of thing that could be a trap in your life. You are asked over and over to do something. You know better, but just to get everyone to shut up, you go along. Usually it’s a bad idea. But you do it anyhow.

The wicked (or just mischievous!) set a trap for you and you did veer from the proper path.

Sometimes the consequences are severe.

The other story this immediately reminded me of was Daniel 6, where officials in Babylon set a trap for Daniel. This one is more straightforward. Rather than wearing Daniel down over time, these officials took the head-on approach. They contrived to get a decree that would require Daniel to violate his commitment to his God.

It’s worth noticing the trap that was set for Darius. That was an oblique attack, leveraging his pride and desire to be thought well of, indeed worshiped, to get him to make a decree that he might otherwise have realized was a bad idea.

Daniel does not fall into the trap. He sticks to his path. The lions’ dinner is delayed and Daniel freed.

It’s worth thinking about both kinds of trap. The confrontation that challenges our courage, or the “fatigue” trap which tests our focus and endurance.

Be alert for all those traps!

(Featured image credit: Delilah, betrayed Samson by revealing the secret of his strength to the Philistines for money By Daniel. Licensed from Adobe Stock.)