diff --git a/Dockerfile b/Dockerfile
index d3b4de5..dc145e5 100644
--- a/Dockerfile
+++ b/Dockerfile
@@ -1,16 +1,48 @@
-FROM python:3.12-slim
-
+# ============================================
+# STAGE 1: Build the Python deps on bookworm-slim
+# ============================================
+# Bookworm so glibc matches the distroless/debian12 runtime below. Flask is pure
+# Python, so no apt build tools are needed here.
+FROM python:3.12-slim-bookworm AS pybuild
 WORKDIR /app
 
 # Install deps first so this layer caches when only the code changes.
 COPY requirements.txt .
 RUN pip install --no-cache-dir -r requirements.txt
 
+# Stage the shared libs the Python interpreter links against into an arch-neutral
+# dir (the glob matches whatever multiarch triplet — x86_64 in CI, aarch64 on an
+# arm dev box), plus the writable data dir owned by the distroless nonroot uid.
+RUN set -eux; \
+    mkdir -p /rootfs/pylib /rootfs/data; \
+    cp -aL /usr/lib/*-linux-gnu/*.so* /rootfs/pylib/ 2>/dev/null || true; \
+    chown -R 65532:65532 /rootfs/data
+
+# ============================================
+# STAGE 2: Distroless runtime (no shell / apt / perl / tar; runs as nonroot)
+# ============================================
+# distroless/cc carries glibc + libgcc + libstdc++; we bring our own Python 3.12
+# and its link libs. Note we do NOT use distroless/python3-debian12 — it ships a
+# far larger CVE surface than the slim image it would replace; copying
+# /usr/local out of the pybuild stage gives us a current interpreter instead.
+FROM gcr.io/distroless/cc-debian12
+WORKDIR /app
+COPY --from=pybuild /usr/local /usr/local
+COPY --from=pybuild /rootfs/pylib /opt/pylib
+# registry.db, databases/, uploads/ and inbox/ are all created under /data at
+# startup. Distroless has no shell, so ownership has to be set at COPY time.
+COPY --from=pybuild --chown=65532:65532 /rootfs/data /data
+
+ENV LD_LIBRARY_PATH=/usr/local/lib:/opt/pylib \
+    PATH=/usr/local/bin:/usr/bin:/bin \
+    AHDX_DATA=/data
+
 COPY . .
 
 # All state lives here, mounted as a volume from the host.
-ENV AHDX_DATA=/data
 VOLUME ["/data"]
 EXPOSE 8080
 
-CMD ["python", "app.py"]
+USER nonroot
+# Exec form — distroless has no shell to interpret a string CMD.
+ENTRYPOINT ["python3", "app.py"]