WASHINGTON, Dec 13 (Reuters) - U.S. officials say that Russian hackers are targeting servers hosting vulnerable software made by the Czech tech company JetBrains for potential SolarWinds-style espionage operations.

In a statement, the U.S. National Security Agency, the FBI and the cyber watchdog agency CISA accused the group, sometimes known as Cozy Bear or APT29, of trying to hijack the servers in a bid to access software developers' source code, something that could potentially allow them to tamper with its compilation or deployment.

A similar technique was used to doctor software made by the U.S. software firm SolarWinds, the statement noted. That cyberespionage campaign led to a wave of serious breaches across the government.

The statement was co-signed by Britain's National Cyber Security Centre as well as Poland's Military Counterintelligence Service and its Computer Emergency Response Team. (Reporting by Raphael Satter; editing by Jonathan Oatis)