Freenode apparently trying to mitigate a dDoS attack by redirecting users to themselves

gistfile1.txt

% dig A chat.freenode.net

; <<>> DiG 9.9.2-P2 <<>> A chat.freenode.net
;; global options: +cmd
;; Got answer:
;; ->>HEADER<<- opcode: QUERY, status: NOERROR, id: 53775
;; flags: qr rd ra; QUERY: 1, ANSWER: 8, AUTHORITY: 0, ADDITIONAL: 1

;; OPT PSEUDOSECTION:
; EDNS: version: 0, flags: do; udp: 4096
;; QUESTION SECTION:
;chat.freenode.net.	IN A

;; ANSWER SECTION:
chat.freenode.net.	711 IN A 83.170.73.249
chat.freenode.net.	711 IN A 127.0.0.2
chat.freenode.net.	711 IN A 38.229.70.20
chat.freenode.net.	711 IN A 82.96.64.4
chat.freenode.net.	711 IN A 208.80.155.68
chat.freenode.net.	711 IN A 128.237.157.136
chat.freenode.net.	711 IN A 213.92.8.4
chat.freenode.net.	711 IN A 127.0.0.1

;; Query time: 22 msec
;; SERVER: 192.168.2.254#53(192.168.2.254)
;; WHEN: Mon Feb  3 12:07:52 2014
;; MSG SIZE  rcvd: 174

DNSDB confirms that, from many places, such local addresses are seen in Freenode replies. (The result is random because DNS is used for load balancing so you may see something different. Retry a few minutes later.)

Official from Freenode : it is done on purpose http://status.engineyard.com/incidents/rs81b00526v2

If I'm actually looking at the correct source code, they filter 127.0.0.1

$targets = gethostbynamel("irc.freenode.net");
$index = array_search('127.0.0.1',$targets);
if($index !== FALSE){
    unset($targets[$index]);
}

Probably not the correct source code, since irc.freenode.net does not exist...

irc.freenode.net has a CNAME to chat.freenode.net
They changed the target now to 208.80.155.68