* A new `TaintNodesByCondition` admission plugin taints newly created Node objects as "not ready", to fix a race condition that could cause pods to be scheduled on new nodes before their taints were updated to accurately reflect their reported conditions. This admission plugin is enabled by default if the `TaintNodesByCondition` feature is enabled. ([#73097](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/73097), [@bsalamat](https://github.com/bsalamat))

- The `kube-apiserver` now reports the synthetic verb when logging requests, better explaining the user intent and matching what is reported in the metrics. ([#102934](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/102934), [@lavalamp](https://github.com/lavalamp))

- Number of errors reported to the metric `storage_operation_duration_seconds_count` for emptyDir decreased significantly because previously one error was reported for each projected volume created. ([#117022](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/117022), [@mpatlasov](https://github.com/mpatlasov)) [SIG Storage]

- Number of errors reported to the metric `storage_operation_duration_seconds_count` for emptyDir decreased significantly because previously one error was reported for each projected volume created. ([#117022](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/117022), [@mpatlasov](https://github.com/mpatlasov)) [SIG Storage]

- Fix etcd_object_counts metric reported by kube-apiserver ([#94773](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/94773), [@tkashem](https://github.com/tkashem)) [SIG API Machinery]

  - kube-apiserver <= v1.21.?

**Fixed Versions**:
  - kube-apiserver v1.25.4
  - kube-apiserver v1.24.8
  - kube-apiserver v1.23.14
  - kube-apiserver v1.22.16

This vulnerability was reported by Richard Turnbull of NCC Group as part of the Kubernetes Audit

 - Scheduling failures due to no nodes available are now reported as unschedulable under ```schedule_attempts_total``` metric. ([#90989](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/90989), [@ahg-g](https://github.com/ahg-g)) [SIG Scheduling]

### Other (Cleanup or Flake)

* Fixes an issue with kubelet-reported pod status on deleted/recreated pods. ([#86320](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/86320), [@liggitt](https://github.com/liggitt))

* Add metrics exporter to the fluentd-gcp deployment ([#45096](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/45096), [@crassirostris](https://github.com/crassirostris))
* Fix the bug where StartedAt time is not reported for exited containers. ([#45977](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/45977), [@yujuhong](https://github.com/yujuhong))

- go.opentelemetry.io/contrib/propagators/b3: v1.10.0
- go.opentelemetry.io/otel/exporters/otlp/internal/retry: v1.10.0
- go.opentelemetry.io/otel/exporters/otlp/otlptrace/otlptracegrpc: v1.10.0
- go.opentelemetry.io/otel/exporters/otlp/otlptrace: v1.10.0
- gopkg.in/ini.v1: v1.51.0
- gopkg.in/resty.v1: v1.12.0
- rsc.io/binaryregexp: v0.2.0
- rsc.io/quote/v3: v3.1.0