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

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