Some 28,000 messages, containing mainly Korean characters, were posted in several bursts during mid-November, affecting three of the four forums. All the prior, human-written messages remained in place, but those became difficult to access since so many SPAM messages were queued in front of them. From all I could see, the three forums were never hacked as such, but rather were defaced by the sheer number of the mechanized postings. The fourth forum was an archive compiled internally at Neumann which was "read only" to the general public, protecting it in this case.
Soon Neumann locked all four of the forums, preventing further posts. They left the contents, including the SPAM messages, visible for several months on the old URLs. In the meantime a major update of the Neumann Web site was already underway, and when that new version was rolled out early last month, the forums were taken off line.
Back in December/January I corresponded with the folks at Neumann/Berlin about this; I'd written some custom software that compiled a list of exactly which posts were SPAM and which ones were valid. I don't have specific permission to quote their reply, but at the time they were evidently considering some new arrangement for on-line technical discussions, and in any case they emphasized that all customers are welcome to write to them directly with questions.
I haven't wanted to be a noodge, so I haven't written back for an update. Maybe someone else here has heard from them more recently. But I'm not holding my breath. The forum took up a fair amount of Martin Schneider's time sometimes, and he's one of their leading product development engineers; no matter how much he enjoys dealing with the public (in at least four languages!), that use of his time had to be justified as a rational business decision. The forums were certainly interesting for some number of us, but Neumann is (gasp) part of a for-profit corporation that is responsible to its shareholders, and its business decisions may not be 100% identical to our wishes in all cases.
--best regards