diff --git a/requirements.txt b/requirements.txt
index fd61b8109..701e08de9 100644
--- a/requirements.txt
+++ b/requirements.txt
@@ -6,5 +6,5 @@ idna==2.7
 pygments==2.1.3
 pyopenssl==18.0.0
 python-dateutil==2.7.3
-pyyaml==3.13
+pyyaml==4.2b1
 requests[socks]==2.19.1
diff --git a/searx/__init__.py b/searx/__init__.py
index b1010f25f..4d7b2a8d3 100644
--- a/searx/__init__.py
+++ b/searx/__init__.py
@@ -22,7 +22,7 @@ from os.path import realpath, dirname, join, abspath, isfile
 from io import open
 from ssl import OPENSSL_VERSION_INFO, OPENSSL_VERSION
 try:
-    from yaml import load
+    from yaml import safe_load
 except:
     from sys import exit, stderr
     stderr.write('[E] install pyyaml\n')
@@ -52,7 +52,7 @@ if not settings_path:
 
 # load settings
 with open(settings_path, 'r', encoding='utf-8') as settings_yaml:
-    settings = load(settings_yaml)
+    settings = safe_load(settings_yaml)
 
 '''
 enable debug if