- Simple script based hyperkube image that bundles all the necessary binaries. This is an equivalent replacement for the image based on the go based hyperkube command + image. ([#84662](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/84662), [@dims](https://github.com/dims))

  `application/vnd.kubernetes.protobuf` at a later time.

## Major updates and release themes

* Kubernetes now supports up to 5,000 nodes via etcd v3, which is enabled by default.
* [Role-based access control (RBAC)](https://kubernetes.io//docs/admin/authorization/rbac) has graduated to beta, and defines secure default roles for control plane, node, and controller components.

  * Passed all the Kubernetes 1.7 end-to-end conformance test suites.
  * Verification against Kubernetes 1.8 is planned soon after the release.

* [stable] [frakti](https://github.com/kubernetes/frakti): CRI implementation for hypervisor-based runtimes is now v1.1. [[@feiskyer](https://github.com/feiskyer)]

- With this new stable feature, Kubernetes supports the scaling of containerized applications with Azure VMSS, including the ability to integrate it with cluster-autoscaler to automatically adjust the size of the Kubernetes clusters based on the same conditions.

### SIG-cli

- Bumped `distroless-iptables` to `0.3.2` based on Go `1.21.1`. ([#120527](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/120527), [@cpanato](https://github.com/cpanato))
- Bumped `distroless-iptables` to `0.3.3` based on Go `1.21.2`. ([#121073](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/121073), [@cpanato](https://github.com/cpanato))

*   Azure-based clusters now support unlimited mount points. ([#54668](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/54668)) ([#53629](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/53629),[ @andyzhangx](https://github.com/andyzhangx))

* IPVS proxier mode now support connection based graceful termination. ([#66012](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/66012), [@Lion-Wei](https://github.com/Lion-Wei))

- Fixed a bug in kube-proxy nftables mode (GA as of 1.33) that fails to determine if traffic originates from a local source on the node. The issue was caused by using the wrong meta `iif` instead of `iifname` for name based matches. ([#134118](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/134118), [@jack4it](https://github.com/jack4it)) [SIG Network]

- Fixes a problem with 63-second or 1-second connection delays with some VXLAN-based
  network plugins which was first widely noticed in 1.16 (though some users saw it
  earlier than that, possibly only with specific network plugins). If you were previously

* Allows extension API server to dynamically discover the requestheader CA certificate when the core API server doesn't use certificate based authentication for it's clients ([#66394](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/66394), [@rtripat](https://github.com/rtripat))