diff --git a/Lib/tarfile.py b/Lib/tarfile.py
index 8c2d26b2e46..98ae12f4c01 100644
--- a/Lib/tarfile.py
+++ b/Lib/tarfile.py
@@ -1880,7 +1880,7 @@ class TarFile(object):
         tarinfo.mode = stmd
         tarinfo.uid = statres.st_uid
         tarinfo.gid = statres.st_gid
-        if stat.S_ISREG(stmd):
+        if type == REGTYPE:
             tarinfo.size = statres.st_size
         else:
             tarinfo.size = 0L
diff --git a/Lib/test/test_tarfile.py b/Lib/test/test_tarfile.py
index 786f57a9149..909b08cece8 100644
--- a/Lib/test/test_tarfile.py
+++ b/Lib/test/test_tarfile.py
@@ -617,10 +617,14 @@ class WriteTest(WriteTestBase):
         if hasattr(os, "link"):
             link = os.path.join(TEMPDIR, "link")
             target = os.path.join(TEMPDIR, "link_target")
-            open(target, "wb").close()
+            fobj = open(target, "wb")
+            fobj.write("aaa")
+            fobj.close()
             os.link(target, link)
             try:
                 tar = tarfile.open(tmpname, self.mode)
+                # Record the link target in the inodes list.
+                tar.gettarinfo(target)
                 tarinfo = tar.gettarinfo(link)
                 self.assertEqual(tarinfo.size, 0)
             finally:
diff --git a/Misc/NEWS b/Misc/NEWS
index 70e3ceeee42..e4a848edab8 100644
--- a/Misc/NEWS
+++ b/Misc/NEWS
@@ -58,6 +58,9 @@ C-API
 Library
 -------
 
+- Issue #8833: tarfile created hard link entries with a size field != 0 by
+  mistake.
+
 - Issue #1368247: set_charset (and therefore MIMEText) now automatically
   encodes a unicode _payload to the output_charset.