This path was special cased used to allow restricted applications to access time zone files, which are needed for time functions. Not any symlink will do, it has to be the specific one shown in the example exploit, or one of a small handful of others that were special cased for similar reasons. The place these symlinks live are owned by root. This is the same root user outside the sandbox as inside it.

So, yes, you need to have root on the box to set up this exploit.