Milan Malpensa Airport

Profile narrative

Milan Malpensa Airport, also known as Aeroporto Milano Malpensa, is an international airport located in Italy that provides air transport services for passengers and cargo. The airport features runways, passenger terminals, and freight facilities that support both domestic and flight operations to destinations across Europe and beyond. As one of the two principal airports serving the Milan metropolitan area, it shares the region’s air traffic with Milan Linate Airport under the management of the same operator. Its role as a gateway to the Lombardy region gives it strategic importance for both tourism and commerce within northern Italy. The facility is subject to oversight by Italy’s civil aviation authority, which sets safety, security and operational standards for all airports in the country. Because of its high profile and critical infrastructure status, the airport has attracted attention from various threat actors in the cyber domain.

The airport is operated by SEA (Società Esercizi Aeroportuali), the company responsible for managing both Malpensa and Linate airports on behalf of the Italian state. SEA’s ownership structure is not detailed in the available sources. The airport’s prominence was highlighted in February 2025 when a pro‑Russian hacker group, Noname057(16), launched a distributed denial‑of‑service campaign that targeted roughly twenty Italian websites, including those of Milan Malpensa and Milan Linate, although no major service disruption was reported. Earlier, in July 2020, the hacker collective LulzSecurityITA claimed to have dumped the contents of twenty‑three databases belonging to the Milan airport system, underscoring the facility’s attractiveness as a target for data‑theft operations. These incidents demonstrate that Milan Malpensa Airport, while primarily focused on aviation services, also operates within a broader cybersecurity risk environment that affects critical transportation hubs. The operator SEA has historically declined to comment publicly on such cyber events, reflecting a cautious approach to incident disclosure.

Incidents

2 incidents linked to this organisation.