diff --git a/translator/common/utils.py b/translator/common/utils.py
index 016a4eb3..874c8ec9 100644
--- a/translator/common/utils.py
+++ b/translator/common/utils.py
@@ -196,7 +196,7 @@ class YamlUtils(object):
     def get_dict(yaml_file):
         '''Returns the dictionary representation of the given YAML spec.'''
         try:
-            return yaml.load(open(yaml_file))
+            return yaml.safe_load(open(yaml_file))
         except IOError:
             return None
 
diff --git a/translator/hot/tosca/tosca_policies_scaling.py b/translator/hot/tosca/tosca_policies_scaling.py
index c1ba9b70..1b63f24c 100644
--- a/translator/hot/tosca/tosca_policies_scaling.py
+++ b/translator/hot/tosca/tosca_policies_scaling.py
@@ -68,7 +68,7 @@ class ToscaAutoscaling(HotResource):
         return yaml.nodes.MappingNode(u'tag:yaml.org,2002:map', nodes)
 
     def _handle_nested_template(self, scale_res):
-        template_dict = yaml.load(HEAT_TEMPLATE_BASE)
+        template_dict = yaml.safe_load(HEAT_TEMPLATE_BASE)
         template_dict['description'] = 'Tacker Scaling template'
         template_dict["resources"] = {}
         dict_res = OrderedDict()
diff --git a/translator/shell.py b/translator/shell.py
index b10da922..1d67c2a4 100644
--- a/translator/shell.py
+++ b/translator/shell.py
@@ -214,7 +214,7 @@ class TranslatorShell(object):
         msg = _('Deploy the generated template, the stack name is %(name)s.')\
             % {'name': heat_stack_name}
         log.debug(msg)
-        tpl = yaml.load(translator.translate())
+        tpl = yaml.safe_load(translator.translate())
 
         # get all the values for get_file from a translated template
         get_files = []