- Removed the following deprecated metrics:
  - node_collector_evictions_number replaced by node_collector_evictions_total

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://issue.k8s.io/121197...

   ([#121912](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/121912), [@JoelSpeed](https://github.com/JoelSpeed))
- Allowed container runtimes to fix an image garbage collection bug by adding an `image_id` field to the CRI Container message.
   ([#123508](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/123508), [@saschagrunert](https://github.com/saschagrunert))

  1. Populate new `RuntimeHandler` field in CRI's `ImageSpec` struct during image pulls from container runtimes.
  2. Pass `runtimeHandler` field in `RemoveImage()` call to container runtime in `kubelet`'s image garbage collection. ([#121456](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/121456), [@kiashok](https://github.com/kiashok))

- Renamed the feature gate for CEL in Admission Control to `ValidatingAdmissionPolicy`. ([#113735](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/113735), [@cici37](https://github.com/cici37))
- Reworded log message upon image garbage collection failure to be more clear. ([#112631](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/112631), [@tzneal](https://github.com/tzneal)) [SIG Node]