* Bump GCI to gci-stable-56-9000-84-2: Fixed google-accounts-daemon breaks on GCI when network is unavailable. Fixed iptables-restore performance regression. ([#41831](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/41831), [@freehan](https://github.com/freehan))

* Update amd64 kube-proxy base image to debian-iptables-amd64:v5 ([#39725](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/39725), [@ixdy](https://github.com/ixdy))

- Kubeadm: the `bridge-nf-call-iptables=1` and `bridge-nf-call-ip6tables=1` preflight checks are removed since not all the network implementations require this setting, network plugins are responsible for setting this correctly depending on whether or not they connect containers to Linux bridges or use...

* Add iptables rules to allow Pod traffic even when default iptables policy is to reject. ([#52569](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/52569), [@tmjd](https://github.com/tmjd))

- Updates `debian-iptables` to v1.6.7 to pick up CVE fixes. ([#104970](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/104970), [@PushkarJ](https://github.com/PushkarJ))
- Updates the following images to pick up CVE fixes:
  - `debian` to v1.9.0
  - `debian-iptables` to v1.6.6

* proxy/iptables: don't sync proxy rules if services map didn't change ([#38996](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/38996), [@dcbw](https://github.com/dcbw))
* Update kube-proxy image to be based off of Debian 8.6 base image. ([#39695](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/39695), [@ixdy](https://github.com/ixdy))

* Restores --username and --password flags to kubectl ([#75451](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/75451), [@liggitt](https://github.com/liggitt))
* Bump debian-iptables image to v11.0.1 to fix security vulnerabilities. ([#75077](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/75077), [@grayluck](https://github.com/grayluck))

- When using IPV6-only, be sure to use `proxy-mode=iptables` as `proxy-mode=ipvs` is known to not work. ([#68437](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/issues/68437))

## Deprecations

- kube-apiserver

- In "large" clusters, kube-proxy in iptables mode will now sometimes
  leave unused rules in iptables for a while (up to `--iptables-sync-period`)
  before deleting them. This improves performance by not requiring it to
  check for stale rules on every sync. (In smaller clusters, it will still

## Changelog since v1.7.10

### Other notable changes

* Bugfix: master startup script on GCP no longer fails randomly due to concurrent iptables invocations. ([#55945](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/55945), [@x13n](https://github.com/x13n))