Ash Carter: Services are investigating Ashley Madison leak

By Jacqueline Klimas, Jacqueline Klimas

Published December 20, 2015

Defense Secretary Ash Carter said Thursday that the military is investigating reports that thousands of troops signed up for a website that facilitates extramarital affairs.

"Of course it's an issue because conduct is very important and we expect good conduct of our people," Carter told reporters during a briefing at the Pentagon.

Hackers released data this week for 32 million users of Ashley Madison, a website that uses the motto "Life is short. Have an affair," on its homepage. Among those, more than 15,000 belonged to email addresses ending in .mil or .gov.

Users did not have to validate an email address, so it's possible some of the accounts are fakes, though the site's parent company did tell Reuters that some of the information is accurate.