31337

The usage of elite (31337) in the "underground" community started back in the days of BBS's. Many such sites were open to the public but as the population of people seeking to leech warez increased, many went to an invite-only format where they only let the most "elite" among them have accounts.

In those days, being elite usually meant one of a few things:

• Knowing the person who ran the board
• Being a member of a pirate, hacking, phreaking, or ANSI art group
• Having tons of H/P text files so you could pretend you belonged to one of the aforementioned groups
• Having some noteworthy skill at graphics programming, reverse-engineering, or social engineering
• Having a lot of time on your hands

The port number used for testing when developing TCP/UDP servers where there is no defined port (it's a new protocol usually). This is the equivalent of using foo as a testing variable when programming.

31337 is the 3379th prime. While the wheels of irony turn in your head, pondering how lame or leet one really must be to come upon this realization (I'm still wondering about the one who said it, "Hey I wonder if that's a prime number. "). Its amazing what a group inadvertently dedicated to the endless search for odd obfuscated obscurities will stumble on while trying to think of a name for an RPG guild...ultimately throwing out all their results because they just weren't period, and deciding they are chaos incarnate, in pseudo ordered form, and that the mild obfuscation of entropy as chaos is accurate enough. So the apply oxymoronical Order of Entropy is born, who know (not) for whom the 3379th prime tolls (probably not us but you never know).

And now for fun with roman numerals, because yes, we live to obfuscate obscurities (redundancy, the spice of life, or should that be meat):

You are so MCCCXXXVII.

Its like MMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMCCCXXXVII man.

Mmmmm tasty. Its like MMMCCCLXXIX.

31337 is also the default port number for the Cult of the Dead Cow's program Back Orifice. Since Back Orifice is often installed as a trojan, script kiddiez often scan subnets for this open port.