MIT Technology Review‘s “The Troll Hunters” (Adrian Chen, Dec 18 2014) calls to mind Mad Magazine‘s black/white “Spy vs Spy” (which was always symmetrical success/failure and escalation).
But it looks as if even good-spy vs bad-spy can get blurred, as internet-power corrupts…
And of course it all began “When Man First Met Troll” (c. 1987 at the latest).