diff --git a/pkg/machine/compression/decompress.go b/pkg/machine/compression/decompress.go
index 4d362c3a5d..56816d5b95 100644
--- a/pkg/machine/compression/decompress.go
+++ b/pkg/machine/compression/decompress.go
@@ -18,6 +18,7 @@ const (
 	macOs                = "darwin"
 	progressBarPrefix    = "Extracting compressed file"
 	zipExt               = ".zip"
+	magicNumberMaxBytes  = 10
 )
 
 type decompressor interface {
@@ -30,24 +31,21 @@ type decompressor interface {
 
 func Decompress(compressedVMFile *define.VMFile, decompressedFilePath string) error {
 	compressedFilePath := compressedVMFile.GetPath()
-	// Are we reading full image file?
-	// Only few bytes are read to detect
-	// the compression type
-	compressedFileContent, err := compressedVMFile.Read()
+	compressedFileMagicNum, err := compressedVMFile.ReadMagicNumber(magicNumberMaxBytes)
 	if err != nil {
 		return err
 	}
 
 	var d decompressor
-	if d, err = newDecompressor(compressedFilePath, compressedFileContent); err != nil {
+	if d, err = newDecompressor(compressedFilePath, compressedFileMagicNum); err != nil {
 		return err
 	}
 
 	return runDecompression(d, decompressedFilePath)
 }
 
-func newDecompressor(compressedFilePath string, compressedFileContent []byte) (decompressor, error) {
-	compressionType := archive.DetectCompression(compressedFileContent)
+func newDecompressor(compressedFilePath string, compressedFileMagicNum []byte) (decompressor, error) {
+	compressionType := archive.DetectCompression(compressedFileMagicNum)
 	os := runtime.GOOS
 	hasZipSuffix := strings.HasSuffix(compressedFilePath, zipExt)
 
diff --git a/pkg/machine/define/vmfile.go b/pkg/machine/define/vmfile.go
index 1795a4dc5a..261cc78226 100644
--- a/pkg/machine/define/vmfile.go
+++ b/pkg/machine/define/vmfile.go
@@ -2,6 +2,7 @@ package define
 
 import (
 	"errors"
+	"io"
 	"os"
 	"path/filepath"
 	"strconv"
@@ -48,6 +49,22 @@ func (m *VMFile) Read() ([]byte, error) {
 	return os.ReadFile(m.GetPath())
 }
 
+// Read the first n bytes of a given file and return in []bytes
+func (m *VMFile) ReadMagicNumber(n int) ([]byte, error) {
+	f, err := os.Open(m.GetPath())
+	if err != nil {
+		return nil, err
+	}
+	defer f.Close()
+	b := make([]byte, n)
+	n, err = io.ReadFull(f, b)
+	if err != nil && err != io.ErrUnexpectedEOF && err != io.EOF {
+		return b[:n], err
+	} else {
+		return b[:n], nil
+	}
+}
+
 // ReadPIDFrom a file and return as int. -1 means the pid file could not
 // be read or had something that could not be converted to an int in it
 func (m *VMFile) ReadPIDFrom() (int, error) {