[wazari972]

Author here.

I will rewrite this sentence, "invalid instruction" is too limited. It should be something like "an instruction that traps, and which isn't already used for another purpose". Syscalls trap but they are already used; and INT3/CC are valid instructions.

[drfuchs]

Your description still has problems on architectures like x86 with instructions of different lengths. In particular, you pretty much have to use a single-byte instruction to do the trap; a multi-byte one runs the risk of clobbering other code that could well be jumped to. That’s why INT3 exists as a single-byte instruction to begin with!