What protocol Opera-Mini uses for Socket communcation?

Question

I have recorded my phone browsing the web with opera-mini and look at the traffic with wireshark. Im trying to understand the protocol it uses as its not familiar to me. I thought it would be some sort of socks5 protocol but its not, could it be some private encrypted protocol "driving" over tcp port 1080, but not the Socks protocol in the RFC? are there any other protocols for such interaction? The socks5 data starts with "05", but opera-mini tcp data starts with something else.. I couldnt see anything that is shared for all client-server packets or server-client packets.

Answer 1

Opera Mini's communication with its proxy is encrypted with the server delivering content as Opera Binary Markup Language.

Since Opera control both the client and server here, there is no need for them to have used any existing, open protocol for client-server communication. They are free to define any protocol they like, optimising it for their use to allow faster page loads and encrypting it for user benefit and/or to protect their ability to charge network operators for their proxies.

Answer 2

The protocol has been reversed-engineered some time ago and there is even a client for Google Chrome - OMPD. Check its source (decompress crx file) to see how it works.