Creating semi-nodes to sustain the network

[Wind_FURY]

reading the previous comment makes me wonder whether these VPS providers like Amazon,... have the capability to alter anything about the blocks/transactions before they give it back to the user. for example if the user who is running his node on an Amazon server could see his coins spent in a fake transaction that the VPS shows confirmed in a fake block?

Anything Amazon can alter, if it's even possible, will be validated by the other nodes, and anything invalid/not following the rules will not be relayed.

Amazon can censor "your node" though.

[NotATether]

reading the previous comment makes me wonder whether these VPS providers like Amazon,... have the capability to alter anything about the blocks/transactions before they give it back to the user. for example if the user who is running his node on an Amazon server could see his coins spent in a fake transaction that the VPS shows confirmed in a fake block?

They can't because the Linux VPSs they offer aren't authenticated with a password but with a private key that can only be downloaded once, when the VPS is created. Also they can't recover said private key if you lose it, you'd have to make a new one.

[ranochigo]

reading the previous comment makes me wonder whether these VPS providers like Amazon,... have the capability to alter anything about the blocks/transactions before they give it back to the user. for example if the user who is running his node on an Amazon server could see his coins spent in a fake transaction that the VPS shows confirmed in a fake block?

They can't because the Linux VPSs they offer aren't authenticated with a password but with a private key that can only be downloaded once, when the VPS is created. Also they can't recover said private key if you lose it, you'd have to make a new one.

CMIIW, but they don't need to interact with the VPS directly since they can perform MITM attack and AFAIK Bitcoin Core connection isn't encrypted (there's BIP 151 to handle encryption, but it's withdrawn).

It isn't. That's why ISPs are potentially the ones that could conduct sybil attacks on Bitcoin nodes. There are attacks which service providers could try to execute, with or without private key authentication.

I'm not sure as to how this would change if the node communicates over Tor instead but I supposed it does alleviate this scenario somewhat.

[BrewMaster]

CMIIW, but they don't need to interact with the VPS directly since they can perform MITM attack and AFAIK Bitcoin Core connection isn't encrypted (there's BIP 151 to handle encryption, but it's withdrawn).

that was partly what i had in mind when i asked the question above and it could become concerning, but since nothing is going on against bitcoin in countries that such companies as Amazon are located in nobody worries about these things. which is probably why BIPs such as the one you mentioned aren't pursued either.