Say I was planning on, in the future (not now! There is alot I need to learn first) looking to participating in a group project that was going to make a massively multiplayer online game (mmo), and my job would be the networking portion. I'm not that familiar with network programming (I've read a very basic book on PHP, MYSQL and I messed around a bit with WAMP).

In the course of my studying of PHP and MYSQL, should I look into hacking? Hacking as in port scanning, router hacking, etc. In MMOs people are always trying to cheat, bots and such, but the worst scenario would be having someone hack the databases. This is just my conception of this, I really don't know. I do however understand networking fairly well, like subnetting/ports/IP's (local/global)/etc.

In your professional opinion, (If you understand the topic, enlighten me) Should I learn about these things in order to counter the possibility of this happening?

Also, out of the things I mentioned (port scanning, router hacking) Is there anything else that pertains to hacking that I should look into? I'm not too familiar with the malicious/Security aspects of Networking.

And a note: I'm not some kid trying to learn how to hack. I just want to learn as much as possible before I go to college, and I really need to know if I need to study this or not.