How Linux handles port connections
 

I searched and couldn't find anything so I decided to post here, as I figured since this is a generic topic, it'd fit in a generic sub-form.

Straight to the point, and I'm not sure if this is a Linux standard, but I've always understood that Linux restricts usage of ports below 1025 to root-user only. My question is why was this method developed?

My theory is that it's to reduce the possibilty users who may not be as knowledgable with Linux from getting hacked. This is probably wrong though as ports 1025-66535 are available to any program as any user.

ports 1 through 1023 were intended for systems services running as the superuser, so those ports are called reserved ports.