The hijacking of a third party's unsecured mail server to deliver junk e-mail. These were favourite targets of spammers, since it makes their throwaway accounts last longer by confusing ISPs as to the real source of the spam. Spam in the real world is a processed meat product produced by the Hormel corporation. The top of a multilevel marketing spam chain, sucking money out of everyone underneath him. The term was coined by Tilman Hausherr in response to an attack on the newsgroup alt.religion.scientology where as many as 30,000 of these messages were posted every day for a period of several months.
Word is, there is a federal investigation underway.
Approximately 200 ISPs were victimized as the sporgers hopped from one throway account to another. This tends to indicate some significant financial backing behind this attack. A spammer's account is usually short lived. There was an arcade game by this name, where you gain points by using a mallet to pound imitation moles when they pop up out of their holes. Major ISPs should have one in their anti-spam offices.