Agreed. To quote Colin Percival's excellent article which addresses both topics:
"Assessing the security of software via the question "can we find any security flaws in it?" is like assessing the structure of a bridge by asking the question "has it collapsed yet?" -- it is the most important question, to be certain, but it also profoundly misses the point. Engineers design bridges with built-in safety margins in order to guard against unforeseen circumstances (unexpectedly high winds, corrosion causing joints to weaken, a traffic accident severing support cables, et cetera); secure software should likewise be designed to tolerate failures within individual components. Using a MAC to make sure that an attacker cannot exploit a bug (or a side channel) in encryption code is an example of this approach: If everything works as designed, this adds nothing to the security of the system; but in the real world where components fail, it can mean the difference between being compromised or not. The concept of "security in depth" is not new to network administrators; but it's time for software engineers to start applying the same engineering principles within individual applications as well."
"Assessing the security of software via the question "can we find any security flaws in it?" is like assessing the structure of a bridge by asking the question "has it collapsed yet?" -- it is the most important question, to be certain, but it also profoundly misses the point. Engineers design bridges with built-in safety margins in order to guard against unforeseen circumstances (unexpectedly high winds, corrosion causing joints to weaken, a traffic accident severing support cables, et cetera); secure software should likewise be designed to tolerate failures within individual components. Using a MAC to make sure that an attacker cannot exploit a bug (or a side channel) in encryption code is an example of this approach: If everything works as designed, this adds nothing to the security of the system; but in the real world where components fail, it can mean the difference between being compromised or not. The concept of "security in depth" is not new to network administrators; but it's time for software engineers to start applying the same engineering principles within individual applications as well."
http://www.daemonology.net/blog/2009-06-24-encrypt-then-mac....