* The webhook admission plugin now works even if the API server and the nodes are in two separate networks,for example, in GKE.
The webhook admission plugin now lets the webhook author use the DNS name of the service as the CommonName when generating the server cert for the webhook.
Action required:

secrets field. Kubernetes clusters are only affected if the ServiceAccount admission plugin and the `kubernetes.io/enforce-mountable-secrets` annotation are used together with ephemeral containers.

**Note**: This only impacts the cluster if the ServiceAccount admission plugin is used (most cluster should have this on by default as recommended in https://kubernetes.io/docs/reference/access-authn-authz/admission-controllers/#serviceaccount), the `kubernetes.io/enforce-mountable-secrets`...

secrets field. Kubernetes clusters are only affected if the ServiceAccount admission plugin and the `kubernetes.io/enforce-mountable-secrets` annotation are used together with ephemeral containers.

**Note**: This only impacts the cluster if the ServiceAccount admission plugin is used (most cluster should have this on by default as recommended in https://kubernetes.io/docs/reference/access-authn-authz/admission-controllers/#serviceaccount), the `kubernetes.io/enforce-mountable-secrets`...

- **Admission webhooks:** Admission webhooks are in widespread use as a Kubernetes extensibility mechanism and have been available in beta since the 1.9 release. The 1.16 release marks the graduation of admission webhooks to general availability (GA).

- Replaced deprecated package `k8s.io/utils/pointer` with `k8s.io/utils/ptr` for the pod-security-admission admissiontests. ([#132742](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/132742), [@PatrickLaabs](https://github.com/PatrickLaabs))

secrets field. Kubernetes clusters are only affected if the ServiceAccount admission plugin and the `kubernetes.io/enforce-mountable-secrets` annotation are used together with ephemeral containers.

**Note**: This only impacts the cluster if the ServiceAccount admission plugin is used (most cluster should have this on by default as recommended in https://kubernetes.io/docs/reference/access-authn-authz/admission-controllers/#serviceaccount), the `kubernetes.io/enforce-mountable-secrets`...

- The deprecated `SecurityContextDeny` admission plugin, which has been deprecated since `v1.27`, has been removed. It is recommended to use the Pod Security Admission plugin instead, which has been available since v1.25. Refer to the [Kubernetes documentation](https://kubernetes.io/docs/reference/access-authn-authz/admission-controllers/#securitycontextdeny) for more information.

This release contains changes that address the following vulnerabilities:

### CVE-2025-5187: Nodes can delete themselves by adding an OwnerReference

- Removed admission plugin `PersistentVolumeLabel`. Please use https://github.com/kubernetes-sigs/cloud-pv-admission-labeler instead if you need a similar functionality. ([#124505](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/124505), [@jsafrane](https://github.com/jsafrane)) [SIG API Machinery, Auth and Storage]...

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