* A buffered audit backend can be used with other audit backends. ([#60076](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/60076), [@crassirostris](https://github.com/crassirostris))

  - kube_apiserver_pod_logs_pods_logs_backend_tls_failure_total becomes kube_apiserver_pod_logs_backend_tls_failure_total
  - kube_apiserver_pod_logs_pods_logs_insecure_backend_total becomes kube_apiserver_pod_logs_insecure_backend_total ([#114497](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/114497), [@dgrisonnet](https://github.com/dgrisonnet))

* Kubernetes version command line parameter in kubeadm has been updated to drop an unnecessary redirection from ci/latest.txt to ci-cross/latest.txt. Users should know exactly where the builds are stored on Google Cloud storage buckets from now on. For example for 1.9 and 1.10, users can specify ci/latest-1.9 and ci/latest-1.10 as the CI build jobs what build images correctly updates those. The CI jobs for master update the ci-cross/latest location, so if you are looking for latest...

- Kube-proxy: delete stale conntrack UDP entries for loadbalancer ingress IP. ([#104151](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/104151), [@aojea](https://github.com/aojea)) [SIG Network]
- Metrics changes: Fix exposed buckets of `scheduler_volume_scheduling_duration_seconds_bucket` metric ([#100720](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/100720), [@dntosas](https://github.com/dntosas)) [SIG Apps, Instrumentation, Scheduling and Storage]

* Ensure the backend pools are set correctly for Azure SLB with multiple backend pools (e.g. outbound rules) ([#76691](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/76691), [@feiskyer](https://github.com/feiskyer))

- Kubeadm: get k8s CI version markers from k8s infra bucket ([#98836](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/98836), [@hasheddan](https://github.com/hasheddan)) [SIG Cluster Lifecycle and Release]

## Changelog since v1.8.11

### Other notable changes

* GCE: Fix for internal load balancer management resulting in backend services with outdated instance group links. ([#62887](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/62887), [@nicksardo](https://github.com/nicksardo))

- Fix the `cloudprovider_azure_api_request_duration_seconds` metric buckets to correctly capture the latency metrics. Previously, the majority of the calls would fall in the "+Inf" bucket. ([#95376](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/95376), [@marwanad](https://github.com/marwanad)) [SIG Cloud Provider and Instrumentation]...

    * [fluentd-gcp addon] Bump prometheus-to-sd to v0.5.0 to pick up security fixes.
    * [metatada-proxy addon] Bump prometheus-to-sd v0.5.0 to pick up security fixes.
* Ensure the backend pools are set correctly for Azure SLB with multiple backend pools (e.g. outbound rules) ([#76691](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/76691), [@feiskyer](https://github.com/feiskyer))

fronted by an L7 load balancer that already mitigates these http/2 attacks may choose not to enable the kube-apiserver mitigation to avoid disrupting load balancer → kube-apiserver connections if http/2 requests from multiple clients share the same backend connection. An API server on a private network may choose not to enable the kube-apiserver mitigation to prevent performance regressions for unauthenticated clients. Authenticated requests rely on the fix in golang.org/x/net v0.17.0 alone. https:...