diff --git a/utils/tar.go b/utils/tar.go
index 477aa9cc..26a47a50 100644
--- a/utils/tar.go
+++ b/utils/tar.go
@@ -58,7 +58,10 @@ func SelectivelyExtractArchive(r io.Reader, prefix string, toExtract []string, m
 
 		// Get element filename
 		filename := hdr.Name
-		filename = strings.TrimPrefix(filename, prefix)
+		filename = strings.TrimPrefix(filename, "./")
+		if prefix != "" {
+			filename = strings.TrimPrefix(filename, prefix)
+		}
 
 		// Determine if we should extract the element
 		toBeExtracted := false
diff --git a/utils/utils_test.go b/utils/utils_test.go
index e543c1c1..6b46b055 100644
--- a/utils/utils_test.go
+++ b/utils/utils_test.go
@@ -65,13 +65,13 @@ func TestTar(t *testing.T) {
 		testArchivePath := path.Join(path.Dir(filepath)) + filename
 
 		// Extract non compressed data
-		data, err = SelectivelyExtractArchive(bytes.NewReader([]byte("that string does not represent a tar or tar-gzip file")), "./", []string{}, 0)
+		data, err = SelectivelyExtractArchive(bytes.NewReader([]byte("that string does not represent a tar or tar-gzip file")), "", []string{}, 0)
 		assert.Error(t, err, "Extracting non compressed data should return an error")
 
 		// Extract an archive
 		f, _ := os.Open(testArchivePath)
 		defer f.Close()
-		data, err = SelectivelyExtractArchive(f, "./", []string{"test/"}, 0)
+		data, err = SelectivelyExtractArchive(f, "", []string{"test/"}, 0)
 		assert.Nil(t, err)
 
 		if c, n := data["test/test.txt"]; !n {
@@ -86,7 +86,7 @@ func TestTar(t *testing.T) {
 		// File size limit
 		f, _ = os.Open(testArchivePath)
 		defer f.Close()
-		data, err = SelectivelyExtractArchive(f, "./", []string{"test"}, 50)
+		data, err = SelectivelyExtractArchive(f, "", []string{"test"}, 50)
 		assert.Equal(t, ErrExtractedFileTooBig, err)
 	}
 }
diff --git a/worker/detectors/data/tar.go b/worker/detectors/data/tar.go
index ae1cc5a2..93a457d1 100644
--- a/worker/detectors/data/tar.go
+++ b/worker/detectors/data/tar.go
@@ -42,5 +42,5 @@ func (detector *TarDataDetector) Supported(path string, format string) bool {
 }
 
 func (detector *TarDataDetector) Detect(layerReader io.ReadCloser, toExtract []string, maxFileSize int64) (map[string][]byte, error) {
-	return utils.SelectivelyExtractArchive(layerReader, "./", toExtract, maxFileSize)
+	return utils.SelectivelyExtractArchive(layerReader, "", toExtract, maxFileSize)
 }