After investigating I have come up with no good reason Mstask.exe/svchost.exe listen on a range of ports. Usually around 1038-1051. What is it waiting for? Why does it just sit there waiting for a connection? Does anything ever to connect to it? There's no solid explanation on Microsoft's site, I may be missing it though.

Just wanted to open this up for discussion. I'm sure it's something simple.

And the boxes I've seen this on are secure and uncompromised.