Netstar app downtime explained
Netstar customers have reported that the vehicle tracking service’s mobile app has not worked since the afternoon of Tuesday, 26 August 2025.
This comes after the company, which is owned by JSE-listed Altron, confirmed on Friday that it suffered a ransomware attack earlier this year, creating concern that the two issues are linked.
However, Netstar has told MyBroadband that the outage of its apps was unrelated to the data breach.
“Netstar confirms that it experienced intermittent issues with its CRM platform. This is not in any way related to the cybersecurity incident reported on last week,” it said.
Customers trying to access their Netstar services said they could log in, but nothing else loaded. “The outages were communicated on normal channels when it occurred,” Netstar stated.
Last week, a group called INC Ransom claimed responsibility for an attack on Netstar’s systems and published a cache of data on its dark web leak site, stating that they had exfiltrated 505GB of data.
Examining a sample of the files uploaded indicated that the attackers stole documents exposing the private information of some customers, as well as data such as administrative passwords, invoices, and source code.
One security researcher who looked at the data notified MyBroadband that several of Netstar’s database passwords had been exposed in one of the leaked files.
MyBroadband passed the information on to Netstar, and we were told that the company was attending to the issue.
Netstar is one of South Africa’s largest vehicle tracking companies. In its latest annual results, Altron reported that Netstar’s subscriber base increased 16% year-over-year to surpass two million users.
Altron reported that Netstar processed over 226 billion data points between 1 March 2024 and 28 February 2025, and has scaled its fleet to over 33,000 assets globally. It also reported EBITDA of R935 million.
Netstar’s statement about the data breach
Following MyBroadband’s report about the data breach, Netstar issued a statement saying that the attack occurred a month prior. Its statement described falling prey to a ransomware attack.
“On 23 June 2025, Netstar experienced a cybersecurity incident that temporarily impacted some of its operations,” it said.
“Although a small subset of on-premise servers were encrypted, Netstar was well prepared and able to respond immediately.”
Netstar said that its internal teams, supported by external cybersecurity experts, swiftly contained the incident and restored core operations.
Netstar revealed that a small subset of on-premise servers were encrypted, but said it was well prepared and able to respond immediately.
“The investigation into the June incident revealed no evidence that customer data was accessed or removed from Netstar systems,” it said.
“Netstar reported the incident to the Information Regulator at the time, and affected parties were notified.”
The company said it was unwilling to negotiate with INC Ransom. “Therefore, data allegedly from Netstar was published on a site with limited access late yesterday.”
According to a hit counter on INC Ransom’s website, the Netstar leak had been viewed 2,200 times by 17:30 on Friday, 27 August.
Netstar said it was aware of INC Ransom’s claims that it had stolen data from its system and was busy investigating in collaboration with leading third-party forensic experts.
“Should new facts emerge, affected parties will be notified and the regulator will be updated without delay,” Netstar assured.
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