VMX virtualization runs afoul of split-lock detection

As someone who knows nothing about this, I have a question: does this essentially mean putting a disassembler in the kernel? Because presumably that particular sequence of bytes that constitutes the opcode could appear in other contexts, right? E.g. as initialized data, as the end of one instruction opcode followed by the beginning of another, etc. Since x86 instructions are variable in length, is there a way to reliably determine this short of disassembling the entire thing from the beginning?

Like I said, I know nothing about this, so this isn't meant as a commentary on whether it is a good solution or not, whether the benefits outweigh the costs, and so forth--I'm just teying to better understand what's going on.