I agree. There have been far easier local exploit in the past. For example CVE-2006-2451 whose exploitation was quite simple and not using any race condition. A

I agree. There have been far easier local exploit in the past. For example CVE-2006-2451 whose exploitation was quite simple and not using any race condition. Also CVE-2009-2692 or CVE-2010-3049. Browsing exploit-db makes it easy to find them.