diff --git a/letsencrypt-auto-source/pieces/check_permissions.py b/letsencrypt-auto-source/pieces/check_permissions.py
new file mode 100644
index 000000000..0ca8b2072
--- /dev/null
+++ b/letsencrypt-auto-source/pieces/check_permissions.py
@@ -0,0 +1,66 @@
+"""Verifies certbot-auto cannot be modified by unprivileged users.
+
+This script takes the path to certbot-auto as its only command line
+argument. It then checks that the file can only be modified by uid/gid 0
+and if other users can modify the file, it prints a warning with a
+suggestion on how to solve the problem.
+
+If the absolute path of certbot-auto contains a symlink, it is not
+handled specially and the symlink is followed. Due to this, there could
+be permissions problems unreported by this script, however, issues like
+this were not caused by our documentation and are ignored for the sake
+of simplicity.
+
+All warnings are printed to stdout rather than stderr so all stderr
+output from this script can be suppressed to avoid printing messages if
+this script fails for some reason.
+
+"""
+from __future__ import print_function
+
+import os
+import stat
+import sys
+
+
+FORUM_POST_URL = 'https://community.letsencrypt.org/t/certbot-auto-deployment-best-practices/91979/'
+
+
+def has_safe_permissions(path):
+    """Returns True if the given path has secure permissions.
+
+    The permissions are considered safe if the file is only writable by
+    uid/gid 0.
+
+    :param str path: filesystem path to check
+    :returns: True if the path has secure permissions, otherwise, False
+    :rtype: bool
+
+    """
+    stat_result = os.stat(path)
+    if stat_result.st_mode & stat.S_IWOTH:
+        return False
+    if stat_result.st_mode & stat.S_IWGRP and stat_result.st_gid != 0:
+        return False
+    if stat_result.st_mode & stat.S_IWUSR and stat_result.st_uid != 0:
+        return False
+    return True
+
+
+def main(certbot_auto_path):
+    current_path = os.path.abspath(certbot_auto_path)
+    last_path = None
+    permissions_ok = True
+    # This loop makes use of the fact that os.path.dirname('/') == '/'.
+    while current_path != last_path and permissions_ok:
+        permissions_ok = has_safe_permissions(current_path)
+        last_path = current_path
+        current_path = os.path.dirname(current_path)
+
+    if not permissions_ok:
+        print('{0} has insecure permissions!'.format(certbot_auto_path))
+        print('To learn how to fix them, visit {0}'.format(FORUM_POST_URL))
+
+
+if __name__ == '__main__':
+    main(sys.argv[1])