You Come From Ports Ephemeral

Team Cymru is a great source of information regarding Internet security.  One example they offer is a find summary of ephemeral source port selection strategies for modern OSes.  It's handy if you are crafting some IDS rules or want to understand what you're seeing in your sniffer.

And it feeds the muse in weird and wonderful ways.

---

You Come From Ports Ephemeral

In darkest aether, packets flow.
It's to IP address they go.
But when they reach their final place,
So many choices, they must face.

Deep within the packet's heart
It lists its goal, it lists its start.
It knows which port to which to bind,
And just what port it left behind.

You come from ports ephemeral,
And most ignore this numeral,
But hackers know your history,
And solve the OS mystery.

Foolishly ignore the past,
You'll find you're losing info fast.
So much can be learned from all these
Port selection strategies.

You come from ports ephemeral,
And most ignore this numeral,
But if you're tuning IDS
This makes you better than the rest.

It's not only the port of call,
Destination isn't all.
Get to know where things began:
There'll be more value from your span.

You come from ports ephemeral,
And most ignore this numeral,
But hackers know your history,
And solve the OS mystery.