we want to turn to tom foreman. good to have you at this hour.andessy they know the position of the aircraft so that makes everyone think they can recover it quickly and determine what brought the plane down. not as simple as that necessarily, is it? >> the biggest trouble in that is the word "quickly." even if they know where everything is this is can be a very involved process. what they have found so far gives them an area to look. the fact that it's only about 100 miles offshore makes it more accessible in many ways. we also know when you about that six-mile difference just a matter of math in case people are interested, if the plane, in fact was traveling 100 miles an hour as some people anticipated and it flew to this point before hitting the water, that would be about three and a half minutes of flying, a little under four minutes of flying before it hit the water. if it was going at 480 miles an hour cruising speed for a plane like, this it would have covered that distance in about 45 seconds. so those are just some reference points. this

tom foreman. back with me now matthew wald mary schiavo, tim taylor jeff wise, and les abend.le scenario from tom foreman there explaining how the plane could have stalled in. >> well it's the basic theory behind aerodynamics and the fact the air flow separates from the wing. yeah. >> obvious question mary. if a plane does stall, how should a pilot react? tom said it would take a very calm crew or pilot to get a plane back on track, or to deal with that situation. >> well it depends on the nature of the stall. i mean you're trained to recover from the stalls in flight school. i mean literally the first week. but the problem is the nature of the stall and if it's a stall in this kind of weather and you've lost the stall as one of the other guests mentioned and off the wings and the tail and you can't recover because you have no control surfaces left that are responsive very difficult if not impossible. >> matthew, these pilots both have thousands of hours of flying experience but this incident as the daily beast points out is leaving a lot of people wondering whether autopilot

i'm tom foreman.st in 2015. ♪ ♪ >>> there is breaking news tonight on two big stories. on opposite side of the world. looking live now at indonesia's international airport. moments away, ambulances are on stand by to ferry body recovered from the wreckage of air asia flight 8501. six bodies from the flight have been recovered so far. including one flight attendant. according to indonesia's search-and-rescue chief. we have the latest as the the tragic search goes on tonight. some 60 miles from the plane any last known location, over the java sea. also live in new york's time square where tomorrow night, the world will be watching the new year's eve ball drop. the nypd stepping up security. this is

. >> for more on what search crews and crash investigators are facing out there, cnn's tom foreman is joining us. hey, tom. >> what they are trying to do in these difficult conditions right now is connect the dots. they know where the plane took off of course. they know where the plane wound up. they know where debris has now been found in that red box down there and they are dealing with currents out here. things that make it difficult. how do they connect the dots here and get really evidence in need. they work in three different layers. there's the surface layer. we talk about this debris floating on top of the water. we're not talking about critical keys as to what brought this plane down because that's not the type of thing that will tend to float out here. if you move from the first layer of the search into the middle layer where they start tracing those pieces on the top through the currents as they know them to exist here and then they can reach the third layer at the bottom down here and that's where the critical information will likely be found. why is that? that's where the

cnn's tom foreman has the latest from washington. >> reporter: hey christine, congressman grimm cameut of court both chastened and defiant. he's publicly saying, yes, i did something wrong, i did help falsify a tax return. this is related to a restaurant he ran, where he's accused of things including hiring people here illegally. falsifying records from the tax man. he said that he did do that and that he was wrong. he was defiant in this sense, once again, he's echoed a theme which he's raised all along which this is a political witch hunt for people out to get him, listen. >> i know that some of people are going to use to demonize me, they've going to use this for political purposes like they've done for the last three years and for every person that's made a negative comment there have been more than ten fold that have made very positive comments, they're telling me how they're keeping me in their prayers and how they're thinking of me. >> he won't be sentenced for several months now. he could get time and he'll have to stay in jail. the question is will he remain in congress? the

our tom foreman explains. tom? >> there are really three layers to the physical search right now. one we've been talking about the most right now is on the surface of the water. wye know where the plane took off and we know where it disappeared and we know where it found debris in the search area and the water is very rough, at times and the surface matters because the surface where you get your first clues most often and clues floating on top of the water may or may not tell you about the cause of the accident when you move to the second layer which is the water column beneath them and you start reverse engineering their position against the competing currents below, you can get an estimate on where they came from and that can lead you to the third layer down here which is the heavy bits on the bottom because those are the ones you really have to get. what are we talking about? we're talking about big parts of the plane. parts of the wings and parts of the tail and parts of the landing gear and the electronics, the flight data recorder and the voice recorder and the engines which

cnn's tom foreman is live in the virtual room to show us how this ocean search will probably play out. tom? >> jake really what we're talking about is three levels of searching going on. we know where the plane took off and where it was headed and where it disappeared and now we know where they found debris. we also know that particularly in these stormy conditions there are very strong currents out in here that have to be considered in terms of what they have done to the first layer of search. the surface layer. let me explain why that makes it a difference here. if you're talking about the surface of the water, where you have wind blowing and currents at work everything can move around hour by hour by hour. the lightest things can move the most. it serves a purpose because it helps point you below the water but as soon as you move down in this column of water, you start encountering all of these different currents of water which can move anything that is suspended between that top, say, 80 to 100 feet above the floor, it can move things around in here. they have to reverse engineer

tom foreman, thank your for explaining it. definitely hopes to put it in perspective for all of us. as crews continue to search for the plane investigators continue their search for answers as to what happened to flight 8501. we have a screen grab we want to show you that might provide some insight. again we want to stress this is just a theory at this point. the images of radar purported to show how fast the airasia plane was going. you see there in the lower right side it says aw q-8501. and then it says 353 and then 363 with an arrow pointing up. okay. a lot of numbers. leapt me explain it. the six three is for 36,300 feet. 353 is the speed in knots. according to airline ratings.com which obtained this screen grab this indicates that 8501 stalled, moving about 100 miles too slowly for such a high altitude. this website's editor-in-chief spoke with cnn. listen. >> it's a wing stall not an engine stall. i have to clarify that. it's a little bit confusing to the viewers when you talk about a stall, you think about your car sta

cnn's tom foreman joins us with more. d tom how did in this case the social media change the way that authorities handled the case? >> you know, this used to be a standard protocol in these situations to isolate the person who was holding people hostage so they have no communication. now with social media this guy was effectively setting up his own broadcast channel of what was going on inside at his will. four times he posted videos among other ways through a service called live leak which is a uk-based service where people can post videos. these were videos from hostages pleading for the authorities to go along with his demands. we have a clip from one of the last ones here. take a listen to what he had on here. >> please help us. it's simple. he wants an isis flag and he wants tony abbot to speak to him on live media. pretty straightforward. what else can we do? we are begging. >> that was from the last one so it was more intense than the earlier ones but in each one there was a recitation of these simple demands to tal

our tom foreman is in washington and back here with me in new york, mel robbins and heather hanson whomiles that this kind of thing even happens in the first place. tom, break it down for me. what exactly are we talking about in terms of the counts, what he's agreeing to and what it will mean in terms of time spent possibly in prison and time spent out of the house? >> reporter: well, basically he's agreeing that everything that they indicted him for has some truth to it, but he's really only agreeing to this one count, tax evasion, that was related to a restaurant that he ran -- basically that he didn't report all the income there and the wages properly and that he evaded taxes on that. that was back several years ago. that's what he's agreeing to. time spent in jail, who knows? maybe none. it's possible the judge could say, we're going to issue some penalties against you but you don't have to go to jail. or he could have to stay as much as 30 months. so that's a really broad range there of where he could wind up with. frankly, i'd be a little surprised if he didn't get some jail time

we have aviation correspondent rene marsh, tom foreman who is also following the story for us. and you have this speculation, tom, that weather could have played a role in this. you have the pilot asking air traffic control while at 32,000 feet to go up to 38,000 feet. request denied. but what kind of weather was the pilot dealing with here? >> it was not unusual weather for that part of the world at this time of year but it was still extreme weather. and that's the kind of weather the pilots always have to worry about because weather is always an issue out there. let's take a look at the weather map here and the area that we're talking about where the plane went down is right in here and at times you can see in the cycle of the weather at the time it filled in almost entirely with the red areas that show very dramatic winds, very dramatic lightning and the potential for dramatic pressure changes. and those pressure changes, i'll tell you, can make a huge huge difference. if you think of a plane in flight when it gets up into the air and it's trying to go through the air, if it

tom foreman has that. orter: basically when you look at the lay of the land here where this tinge has been found there are indications this could really step up in speed right now in terms of finding clues to what happened. one of the reasons is when you talk about any kind of aircraft helicopters reaching the location not only do we have ships on scene able to do it but the actual distance from the shore to this location is only about 99 miles from the nearest major hub up in here. that's really in strikable range. also beyond that and important to note is the water depth. air france when it went down they found debris after five six days but they didn't find the body the parts of the airplane for almost two years, but that was much much much deeper water. here the average depth is only 131 feet. where this wreckage has been found so far, it's a little bit closer to 100 feet deep so you're actually talking about a range here where for all the advantages you might get from side scan sonar or from dragging s

for more on how the siege played out in zsydney, specifically on social media, let's bring in tom foreman. he's been going through the social media for us. walk us through what you're finding out. >> this was undeniably a force. multiplier for this man who took these hostages. he used social media to create the image that he was much bigger than one person. maybe there were other people involved. police have to look into that. but at the moment he created this fiction of a much bigger world. one of the aaways he did this was through the use of the hostages themselves. videos he forced them to post on video services out there in which they made statements. there were four of these where they repeated his demands. they grew ever more urgent. they were asking for certain demands. one of the things they said was it's not hard to meet these demands. please help us, it's simple. he wants an isis flag and wants the prime minister to speak to him on live media. pretty straight forward. what else can we can do, i'm begging. he essentially set up his own broadcast operation to get his message out t

cnn's tom foreman joins us to show us how they're sorting out what may have gone wrong. >> reporter:hings they have to look at here is weather. and they have to talk about weather because weather is so often a factor. look at the flight path of this plane as it took off and flew less than an hour and look at the weather system it was flying through as it went missing there. tremendous, horrible storms under way. why could that make such a difference? let's blow it up and look at it closer. if you think about this plane flying through a storm system a big storm system out here one of the first things many people ask about is lightning. could lightning have brought this plane down? there is plenty of lightning going on in the area. is that capable of bringing down a plane like this? it may be but it's highly unlikely. here's why. a modern plane like this is meant to be hit by lightning because they know it's going to happen. the skin of the plane is made to conduct that lightning along it and then expel it off the wingtips and off the tail. even if it penetrates and ruins some system o

tom foreman, cnn, washington. ♪ ♪ what would you do if i sang out a tune ♪ ♪ would you stand up and walk a great voice there. the music world remembering the distinctive voice and moves of joe cocker. the british-born crooner hit the big time back in 1969 at woodstock with this rendition of the beatles' "with a little help from my friends." now we heard -- yeah. >> you hear it right there. cocker continued to perform four four decades in which he had several hits and unmistakable stage presence and hit number one and had a grammy for the duet "up where we belong" but told npr his favorite song he recorded was "you are so beautiful." ♪ you are so beautiful to me [ applause ] >> wow, joe cocker died from lung cancer at his home in colorado. he was 70 years old. and many thanks for watching us here on cnn. i'm rosemary church. and i'm errol barnett. "early start" is next for those of you in the states. for everyone else stay tuned to "cnn newsroom." have a great day. ♪ what would you do if i sang out a tune would you stand out and walk out on me ♪ ♪ lend me your ears and i'll sing you a son

tom foreman, thank you so much. up next here, hear the way australia tries to crackdown on home grown terrorists pretty unique as our travel overseas to join this group, this group that's isis. and one australian journalists whose colleague was down on the ground during the raid. hear what she heard moments before the takedown. you're blindsided for a second time. they won't give you enough money to replace your brand new car. don't those people know you're already shaken up? liberty mutual's new car replacement will pay for the entire value of your car plus depreciation. call and for drivers with accident forgiveness, liberty mutual won't raise your rates due to your first accident. switch to liberty mutual insurance and you could save up to $423 dollars. call liberty mutual for a free quote today at see car insurance in a whole new light. liberty mutual insurance. >> breaking news here on cnn. i'm brooke baldwin. today's hostage standoff shocked a lot of australians and for a time put a normally busy section of th

while the airlines says it's too early to blame weather for the plane's disappearance, tom foreman explains exams the major weather factors. >> bad weather is so often a factor in aviation accidents that investigators simply have to consider it in this case because we know this plane passed through an immense band of terrible weather. so here are three key questions people have been asking us. first, could lightning have taken this plan down? not likely. modern airliners are designed so that if they're hit by lightning, that lightning will channel along the metal skin of the plane be ejected off the wing tips or the tail, and even if it penetrates to the interior of the plane, very improbable that it would disable enough pieces of electronics to bring the plane down. second possibility. what if the storm is so immense and so big that it creates such turbulence the plane is attorneytorn apart in flight? this is not likely. these planes can take a huge impact. if you had an underlying problem with maintenance it could cause it but probably not. third one, what if there are so many high and lo

tom foreman, cnn, washington. >> tom, thank you so much. coming up here on cnn, u.s. strikes against isis take a terrifying turn. militants capture a pilot after his plane went down over syria. what this means for the fight against isis moving ahead. >>> and next, another deadly officer involved shooting and even more protests but as the mayor of the city points out, look at the facts. folks, this is not ferguson. the officer had a gun pointed directly at him and the whole thing was caught on tape. we'll talk to the mayor of berkeley, missouri, who will set the facts straight right after the break. narrator: this is the storm sea captain: there's a storm comin narrator: that whipped through the turbine which poured... surplus energy into the plant which generously lowered its price and tipped off the house which used all that energy to stay warm through the storm. chipmunk: there's a bad storm comin! narrator: the internet of everything is changing how energy works. is your network ready?" ♪ (holiday mhey! is playing) i guess we're going to need a new santa ♪(the musi

at one point, tom foreman takes us through exactly how the hack happened. >> take him out. >> you want us to kill the leader of north korea? >> yes. >> what! >> reporter: a hack such as the one on sony can start with a list of names like the credits for a film. only this list would be of employees. hackers would scrutinize that list for people who work on the targeted companies computer network sorting out their relationships with information from facebook and linked in and even figuring out which projects they're involved with. >> i'm going to go ahead. security specialist alex mcgeorge helps companies understand how it works. >> once you've got a list of meme you think will have this list of access that's who you target for spearfishing. >> it's when they send it to a specific person that seems to be coming from a legitimate colleague. >> i look at it. because it's from someone i know i open the e-mail because the subject makes sense i then click on the attachment. that's critical. >> right so now you're going to a web page that i designed and it's -- as you'll notice as it renders i

cnn's tom foreman is working that part of the story for us. tom, what can you tell us?out this. this plane was at 32,000 feet when it was last seen on radar in the one-hour flight before it disappeared and so far, in this red zone over here is where they found some of the debris but not a whole lot. now that could mean any number of things. it could mean the bad weather and conditions have made it hard to find more but clearly some aviation analysts are beginning to hope that maybe what it means is that most of the plane was intact when it hit the water. it created a giant debris field. why would that matter? that would matter because if it's all intact then you basically have a sort of a holy grail to look for out there. one area where you might be able to find all of the critical components, parts of the wings and parts of the tail and part of the electrical system and all of the computers onboard and of course the flight data recorder and the voice recorder that mattered and parts of the cockpit and the engines each at about 9,000 pounds. if this whole plane went int

>> tom foreman, thank you very much. let's dig deeper. joining us, bob baer. lip mudd, and tom fuentes. and our national security analyst peter bergen. phillip, how unusual is it that the gunman forced hostages to actually post messages to these various social media sites? >> boy, i remember back -- wolf, you'll probably remember those attacks in mumbai, going back six or seven years, when people in the attack group from pakistan and india were using smartphones to broadcast live. it was incredible the power then of social media to transmit those messages. i think the question we're going to have after this is how do we give police the tools to shut down somebody's phone, to shut down somebody's social media access on site. so these kinds of people can't get access from a site like we saw in sidney today. >> tom fuentes, the congress, the chairman of the house homeland security committee spoke with me earlier about these radicalized terror threats being posed online. how do you combat against these online threats and also the inspiration for these individuals t

tom foreman takes us through exactly how the hack attack happened. >> take him out. >> you want us toill the leader of north korea? >> yes. >> what! ? >> this list would be of employees, hackers scrutinized that list for people who work on the targeted company's computer network. sorting outaire relationships with information from facebook and linked in, and even figuring out which projects they're involved with. alec mcgeorge helps company understand how it works. >> wouns you've got a list of people you think are going to have this level of access, that's who you then target for spear phishing. >> that's when a hacker spends an e-mail to a specific person that seems to be come flg a legitimate colleague. >> i look at it. because it's from someone i know, i open the e-mail. then the subject makes sense so i click on the attachment. and that's critical, right? >> right. so now you're going to a web page that i designed. as you'll notice, as it ren dors here, it's going to look legitimate. >> but that website is installing malicious software and in seconds, the target's computer is und

tom foreman is here to give us a look at what that looks like. tom? >> they are looking at three different layers. the first playlayer is where they have found the debris now, all of these different currents at work moving the water around. the first layer is the surface of the water. that's where they found this critical evidence so far. and it's important because even though they found these items up here these may not be the critical items to the investigation itself they are important because they help point the way as you move down inside the water column they can reference those items up on top, compare them to all the currents moving underneath here. some of which may be moving in one drinks some of which may be moving in another direction and essentially reverse engineer some idea of where this plane made contacts with the water, if it was in one general area and that can lead them to the bottom the parts that they really need to find. what are those kinds of parts? we're talking about very heavy things basically. we're talking about the cockp

> while the airline says it's far too early to blame weather for the plane's disappearance, our tom foreman a look at the major factors at play. >> bad weather is such a factor that they have to consider it. we know this flight passed through an immense band of bad weather. first, could lightning have taken this plane down? not likely. modern airliners are made so that it will be ejected off the wing tips or tail. and even if it penetrates to the interior, very improbable that it would disable enough electronics to bring the plane down. second possibility, what is the storm is so immense and so big that it produces such turbulence and the plane is torn apart in flight. this plane can take a huge impact. something was already wrong with the wind or tail, then the weather could exacerbate it. third one, what if there were so many high and low pressure systems so close together that the plane just lost a tremendous amount of speed all of a sudden, dropped to 100 miles per hour and began to stall. if that happens, then you have a real serious problem related to the weather because the air flow

tom foreman is outfront with the latest. tom how are they conducting the search particularly in the conditions there they have much shallow water than the mh-370. >> this is only about 100 feet or so. let's go over the basics. you have three layers of search. the first is what we're talking about. we know where the plane went and where the search areas were established and where debris has been found and in the red box and there are royaling waters that can move things around a great deal. that is the first layer. the top of the water. the first layer of searching matters because that is where the first clues come. if you think about all of those things that they found so far, the pieces on top of the water those can give you an if idea of where to look. they may or may not be critical clues to what happened to this plane, but if you take those and go to the second area of searching, which is the water column ben eeblg the surface, this -- beneath the surface, 80-100 feet down to the bottom and study the currents out there, y

our tom foreman looks at the major weather factors at play. >> bad weather is so often a factor in aviation accidents, they have to consider it. here are three key questions people have been asking us. first, could lightning have taken this plane down? not likely. modern airliners are made so that it will be ejected off the wing tips or tail. and even if it penetrates to the interior, very improbable that it would disable enough electronics to bring the plane down. second possibility, what if the storm is so immense and so big that it produces such turbulence and the plane is torn apart in flight. again, this is not likely. this plane can take a huge impact. if you had an underlying mechanical problem something was already wrong with the wind or tail, then the weather could exacerbate it. but if the plane is healthy, probably not. third one, what if there were so many high and low pressure systems so close together that the plane just lost a tremendous amount of speed all of a sudden, dropped to 100 miles per hour and began to stall. if that happens, then you have a real serious problem rel

tom foreman here with more on this. this is a tough task. st challenge in this kind of recovery tom? >> the biggest challenge in this is going to be sheer topography. but it's in their favor in this case. if you look at what we're talking about here this is some 100 miles or so offshore. that's in their favor. the depth of the water out here is in their favor in that it's only maybe 100 feet deep in that particular area. they already have debris on the surface pointing them to where they need to go. and the tools they have are the same tools we talk about in the malaysia crash, the twa crash. they will deploy all of them at some point here. it's not just a matter of looking down to see it with divers. the water level in this area is about 100 feet or so. this is easily in the range of divers. but they'll also use pinger locaters to find out where the flight data recorders are and any sort of underwater robotics they want to look through the wreckage, to retrieve some of the wreckage. they have a lot of tools as their disposal here. they will

cnn's tom foreman is looking at all the factors at play in this investigation. one of the big focuses here is going to be the flight path, tom. >> absolutely. they want to find out if anything unusual happened in that little bit less than an hour that the plane was flying. and then critically what led to this plane disappearing from radar there and then showing up here in the red area where they found the debris? 60 to 120 miles is now the estimate of where this debris is from there. that's a big range even though a lot of wild currents are going on out here, what made that happen? that's going to involve three levels of searching in the ocean. the first one, what we're hearing the most about right now is the surface of the water. all the debris they find on the surface of the water is important to the investigation, probably not the most important pieces but in critical positions right now because they show where other things might be. how is that? if you move down through the water column and you look at all the currents that are at work out there, the things c

cnn's tom foreman is mapping all of this out. >> reporter: it's easy to think when you talk about somethingis, when you know that the plane took off and flew for less than an hour this way, that it would be easy to have a tiny search area. but look at the size of the search zones out here. it's about the size of south carolina and indiana combined. search searching all that is a big challenge. right now, they're spreading out, and look all the different nations involved trying to get assets to look for this wreckage out there, looking for seat cushions or anything else floating on top of the water, a big fuel slick, anything like that. all these nations are involved and brought along a significant amount of assets. we have about 30 different ships involved 15 airplanes. still, this is a tremendous area to cover and it's complicated by this simple fact. look at the weather out here. this was the weather when the plane went down and they've had bits and pieces of the same kind of weather happening out there now. so all of those planes all of those ships trying to search out there, they're enc

cnn's tom foreman, tell us how it all went down. >> here is sydney. if we move in closer for a more detailed map, you see the famous opera house, the u.s. consulate not far away. i've been to this area of this town at that time of time. yes, it is absolutely full of people, teeming with people. there's the consulate, the lindt store, the reserve bank of australia across the street. this is a tremendously busy area. but i want to bring up a detail of the place that he tried to take and point out why this was also a challenging environment for someone who wanted to do something terrible like this. look at this building. the area he took over, yes, it had a ton of windows in which people could look in. this is the main entrance right there. over there is the entrance to the building. there appears to be another entrance into the lindt shop here from the lobby. on the other side, if you come all the way around here, you can see toward the back those black doors near the back, that's yet another service entrance to this area. and there may be another one f

tom foreman has more. >> carol, there are three layers of the physical search right now, the one we've been talking about a lot is the first layer. we talk about where the plane took off, where it disappeared. we talk about the search areas and where we have debris on the surface in these roiling waters of the java sea. it is the first layer because it's the top of the water but why is it important? those pieces that they find on the top even if they don't tell a whole lot about what happened to the plane are indicators because when you move down into the second layer of the search the water column below, and you start comparing the location of those pieces to the water currents, which way they're moving underneath there, they can help give you an idea through reverse engineering where they came from if they floated up from the debris on the bottom because that third layer, the bottom is where you really have to get to reach the important pieces out there. what are we talking about? when you're trying to figure out what happened to a plane, you want to know what happened to the critica

christine, this is said to be an area where the swaur relatively shallow and we heard from our tom foreman that even divers could be used or deployed into the depths of this area. at what point do you start pulling out that under water equipment? >> well we're still at that point where we haven't really found debris and that's really the first, the first area that they have to make they have to make some contact with debris they have to have a lead to follow before you can put anything in the water. they will still be working from ships, the p3 ryan is doing aerials. they are looking for clues. they are looking for something they can put on the grid and start from there. divers would be a possibility once we have an area that needs to be investigated. again the depths are probably 40 meters the water temperature is 70 or 80 degrees, i believe, which is very comfortable. still can put eyes under water. >> need more guidance? >> absolutely. >> mary given this is supposed to be such a travelled waterway so busy with different ships, is it weird that there have been seemingly no clues, no sign

we get the details from cnn's tom foreman. >> reporter: from the beginning right until the bitter end, the gunman put social media in play, and police were sharply aware of the impact. >> i think that there's probably a number of mediums being used at the moment, but it is, we all have to be very careful not to completely overreact at this time. >> reporter: four times the gunman apparently forced hostages to record video of his demands and post them online. in a final one, the woman says urgently, this is all he wants. it's not hard, why are we still here? please help us. i'm begging. but the gunman also used these messages to say he had bombs planted elsewhere and to imply that he had outside operatives to set them off. police have found no evidence of that. >> to the people of sydney, this was an isolated incident. it is an isolated incident. >> reporter: still, as authorities tried to calm fears, the gunman was ramping them up, apparently urging his hostages to use their social media accounts to publicize this. >> he's going to twitter, through radio announcers, it is a very bizar

my colleague tom foreman was tracking those from washington. this was one of the extremely unusual circumstances where we could follow things, but only to a point. >> only to a point. one of the critical elements were the videos posted by the hostages at the behest at this hostage taker. they were posted on live link chrks is a service out of the uk which post videos sort of like youtube does. people stated the demands and they grew more urgent in tone. four of them in all, listen to the clip of the fourth one. >> please help us. it's simple, he wants an isis flag and want to speak to him on live media pretty straight forward. what else can we do? we are begging. >> the demands were pretty much the same in all four of them. you can hear the pressure on these hostages as they repeated these demands. but every one of them gave clues to authorities about the situation inside that very tense room. >> and then the answer to this might be quite simple, but. sometimes it's illusive, and that is that the media was asked not to air those during this inc

i'm tom foreman. wishing you all of the best and none of the worst in 2015. ♪ ♪ >>> there is breaking news tonight on two big stories. on opposite side of the world. looking live now at indonesia's international airport. moments away ambulances are on stand by to ferry body recovered from the wreckage of air asia flight 8501. six bodies from the flight have been recovered so far. including one flight attendant. according to indonesia's search-and-rescue chief. we have the latest as the the tragic search goes on tonight. some 60 miles from the plane any last known location over the java sea. also live in new york's time square where tomorrow night, the world will be watching the new year's eve ball drop. the nypd stepping up security. this is "cnn tonight." i am don lemon. thank you for joining us. how will police keep times square safe when they're at odds with the mayor literally turning their backs on him. a lot to got to tonight. begin with the latest on the crash of flight 8501. i want to begin wi

tom foreman is "outfront" with a special report. >> take him out. >> you want us to kill the leader of korea? >> yes. >> what. >> reporter: a hack such as the one on sony can start with the credits for a film but this would be the list of employees. hackers would scrutinize that list for people that work on the computer network, sorting out their relationships with information from facebook and linkedin and field goaling out which projects they are involved with. security specialist alex mcgeorge helps companies understand how it works. >> once you have a list of people that you think are going to have this level of access, that is who you then target for spear phishing. >> spear phishing is when a hacker sends an e-mail to a specific person that seems to come from a legitimate colleague. >> and because it is from someone i know, i open the e-mail and the subject makes sense, i then click on the attachment and that is critical, right? >> right. so now you are going to a web page that i designed. and as you notice, as it renders here, it will look legitimate. >> reporter: but that websi

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