Originally Posted by V_RocKs

Well the way this happens is...

A hacker finds an affiliate program that is using an exploitable piece of software. Usually it is a forum. The exploit is often a remote exploit which means the hacker has remote control of the server. Since he has this control he views the config file for said forum and gets the mysql user/pass.

Now he connects to the mysql server and queries the members DB for emails to sell to his Russian friends. But being too aggressive and Emails being worth money he also downloads the 2000 to 5000 webmaster emails too and puts them in with the users...

Now we all get spammed because the hacker is an idiot... But in a sense he is also smart. He gets more money for having more emails even though the people getting emailed don't buy porn, they sell it.

Employees don't bring home Email lists... Hackers just take them. So much easier.