No, that's not accurate.

If you read the article you quoted:

> We are posting before an originally coordinated disclosure date of January 9, 2018 because of existing public reports and growing speculation in the press and security research community about the issue, which raises the risk of exploitation. The full Project Zero report is forthcoming (update: this has been published; see above).

Just from public Gooogling, I believe it may have been the Register who tried to get in on the scoop, and broke the embargo:

https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/01/04/intels_spin_the_reg...

No-one necessarily broke the embargo. A blogger noticed unusual activity around a certain linux patchset and put two and two together, and the register mostly sourced from his article ( http://pythonsweetness.tumblr.com/post/169166980422/the-myst... )