Hacking has been in the news non-stop lately. Did Russia hack the elections? Was it all just hype? We may never know. But another hacking story broke this week, albeit with much lessfanfare.
Hamas hacked the IDF.
We know Israel’s security is top-notch, so how did Hamas manage to penetrate?
They bided their time, thinking long and hard, until they managed to identify and target a weak spot. When they found it, they struck. What did they use? A honey trap!
Hamas operatives posed as attractive, young Israeli women by assuming their identities and making contact with soldiers, mainly through Facebook. Following contact with soldiers, the Hamas operatives would attempt to engage in an intimate virtual relationship and convince soldiers to download a messaging app that would allow for video chatting.
The app was actually a Trojan horse, which gave Hamas total control over the device and allowed the terrorist organization to activate the camera and microphone, access contacts, videos and photos, and even Whatsapp conversations and emails—all without the soldier being aware.
Moreover, Hamas also managed to delete the application from the devices, while simultaneously installing more sophisticated monitoring and control applications without leaving a trace.
Fortunately, the IDF quickly caught wind of the ploy and no major military secrets were revealed.
It is the approach here that stands out: first they made themselves look like friends, then they turned around and stabbed Israel in the back!
We may not be soldiers in the IDF, but we have had similar experiences in a spiritual sense. Every single one of us was born good. We want to do the right thing. We don’t want to sin. We don’t want to fight with our neighbors and friends. We don’t want to lie or cheat or hurt anyone. We are good people.
But our evil inclination wants to hack us and harm us. In fact, the evil inclination actually has three faces: First it entices you to sin (evil inclination), then it is the prosecuting angel in Heaven (Satan), and then it is the Angle of death.
The goal of the evil inclination is to harm us, to kill us, to take our souls away—it is the angle of death. But how can it accomplish this when we are so very well protected?
So what the yetzer hara (evil inclination) does is pose as our friend. He honey traps us. He explains to us how sweet and how delicious this piece of shrimp is. Then he tells us how delicious and how sweet it is to slander somebody and he uses our tongue to speak mockingly all day long. Ahh ,how sweet it is! Then he convinces us to get into a deliciously virulent argument with somebody else because it is so pleasurable to him. And on, and on.
And then, when he’s turned us so far from our innate goodness that we hardly recognize ourselves, the yetzer hara goes on high to become our prosecuting angel, and then once that is done he kills us
It’s up to us to take precautions to ensure we won’t be hacked. Just like the IDF is now running training sessions for its soldiers, to make sure they know how to recognize and detect honey traps, we need to sign ourselves up for an extra dose of Torah study, an extra mitzvah, to build up our armor and protect ourselves from the devilish ways of the wily evil inclination.