It might be unlikely if this were over a random [anime,gaming,furry,...] convention, but these are people at the leading edge of web technology. Given the audience, it's entirely possible someone within it could orchestrate such an attack.

That tweet is unsigned, where all others are. They clearly have a well-enforced policy of tweet signing, but the firing tweet has none. FB posts have the same signing--except the post about the firing. The blog and status portal sites have the comment under clear user accounts, so it doesn't look like they're trying to have a unified front on it, as might be implied by unsigned tweets and FB posts.