The word is a portmanteau of spam and forgery, coined by German software developer, and critic of Scientology, Tilman Hausherr.
However, sporgery is not merely disruptive but also deceptive or libellous because it involves falsifying the headers of objectionable posts so they appear to originate from newsgroup regulars.
The purpose is not merely to jam the forum, but also to sully the reputations of its regular users by falsely signing their names to offensive posts.
From October 1998 to September 1999, 1,462,390,911 sporgery bytes were detected: that figure does not include what was canceled (deleted from USENET) before it could propagate.
These agents were given a large amount of cash and air fare to fly to another city, specifically to acquire Internet access for later use in sporging.
[8] The sporgery attack against alt.religion.scientology ended a few months after the name and address of one of the perpetrators was acquired by one of the victims, at which time the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation got involved.